Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has been erupting for a whole year with lava shooting 1,400ft into the sky

A volcano in Hawaii has been erupting for more than year, routinely spewing fountains of lava more than a thousand feet into the air.

Kilauea in Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park had its 39th explosive episode on December 23, the one year anniversary of its current eruption.

The ongoing eruption has broken multiple records for the ‘highest lava foundations’, the ‘most volume of lava erupted ‘and the ‘highest rate of lava effusion’, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

In new spectacular footage, the shooting lava reaches as high as 1,400 feet, higher than the Eiffel Tower.

Fountains in the 39th episode since the current eruption began in December 2024 lasted for 5.9 hours and produced an estimated 13 million cubic yards (10 million cubic meters) of lava, the USGS said.

“This by far is the most amazing thing I’ve seen in my life in terms of Hawaiian volcanism,” Ken Hon, scientist-in-charge at USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, told Hawaii News Now.

“It’s built up a big wedge that’s over 200 feet thick of lava on the surface of the lava lake. Never seen anything quite like that before.”

Kilauea, one of the world’s youngest but most active volcanoes, is located on the south of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Contained with a park some 200 miles south of the state’s largest city, Honolulu, eruptions pose no immediate danger to residential areas.

However the USGS have said eruptions can have far-reaching effects downwind.

This is because as sulfur dioxide is continuously released from the summit during an eruption, it will react in the atmosphere to create the visible haze known as vog (volcanic smog) downwind of Kilauea. 

These chemical combined may cause respiratory and other problems at high concentrations.

The episodes so far have varied immensely in size and duration, with episode 38 in November having had the “highest effusion rate” of 1,000 to 1,2000 cubic yards per second, which refers to the amount of magma or lava dispersed through a vent at once.

During ongoing eruptive episodes, the summit region of Kilauea deflates, as magma that had been stored within the volcano erupts on the surface.

Between eruptive episodes, the summit consistently inflates, as magma accumulates within shallow storage areas.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) analyses this pattern of inflation and deflation to forecast timeframes for when new eruptive episodes can start.

The lava fountains during the ongoing Kilauea summit eruptions have formed 140ft of tephras, creating a new puʻu (hill) southwest of Halemaʻumaʻu crater.

The ongoing eruption has attracted tourists with 157,000 people visiting in November this year, a 43 per cent rise compared to the year before, as reported by Hawaii News Now.