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- Currently in Philadelphia — September 12, 2023: A sunny lunch break
Currently in Philadelphia — September 12, 2023: A sunny lunch break
Plus, Kīlauea erupts in Hawai'i. You can watch a livestream.
Eric Holthaus & Abe Musselman
September 11, 2023
The weather, currently.
Cloudy, with a sunny break for lunch
The clouds backed off yesterday just long enough for a noontime walk around Clark Park. Today looks like more of the same, as the patchy clouds and storms we’ve been having make one last appearance for the week. We’re expecting some fog this morning, so be extra careful if you’re piloting any kind of ship into any kind of harbor. Things should be clear by the late morning, and the afternoon will be mostly sunny and decently humid, with temperatures reaching a high of 85˚F. There’s a 20% chance of rain in the evening and a possible very-late-night thunderstorm.
— Abe Musselman
What you need to know, currently.
The Kīlauea volcano on the big island of Hawai’i began erupting on Sunday afternoon — its fifth eruption in the past four years.
Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, so this really isn’t a surprise, but it’s still a literally awesome reminder that we all live on a planet that is continually in motion at all space and time scales.
The Hawaiian islands were formed over the past 50 million years by the same plume of upwelling undersea magma in the middle of the Pacific. The island of Hawai’i is the largest and youngest island of the chain — Kīlauea emerged from under the ocean just 100,000 years ago. In 2018, the volcano’s summit collapsed and released a lava flow up to 500m (1600ft) thick that destroyed hundreds of homes and marked a shift into its current eruptive phase. In contrast, this week’s eruption is extremely minor — but still impressive.
The US Geological Survey has set up a live view of the eruption in Kīlauea’s Halemaʻumaʻu crater:
What you can do, currently.
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