Posted on: Friday, January 24, 2003

Mauna Loa swelling slackens

By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writer

The recent building of pressure in Mauna Loa has slowed, lessening the chances of an eruption for now, a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory official said yesterday.

Since May 2002, recording instruments along Moku'aweoweo — Mauna Loa's caldera — showed that the summit area was extending and rising, indicating that magma was pressurizing a reservoir beneath the surface.

"The rate of filling has slowed down over the last couple of months," Arnold Okamura, deputy scientist in charge of the observatory, said in the monthly Volcano Watch update.

"During the inflation last year, the pattern of swelling was very similar to that observed before the latest two eruptions (in 1975 and 1984), though the rate was somewhat higher than we'd observed in the past," Okamura wrote.