Kilauea Episode 56 Erupts: 660-Foot Lava Fountains End Abruptly After Six Hours

The fountains forecast all week arrived on Thursday — and finished the same evening. Episode 56 of Kilauea's ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption began at 12:10 p.m. HST on November 5, 2026, and ended abruptly at 6:01 p.m. HST after nearly six hours of continuous lava fountaining, the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) said in its end-of-episode Volcanic Activity Notice 2026/H521, issued at 6:21 p.m. HST.

It is the dated development WorldEye's coverage has been building toward: on November 3, precursory lava returned to Halemaʻumaʻu and USGS raised the alert to Watch, and on Thursday the full fountaining episode the observatory had forecast finally fired — then stopped as suddenly as these episodes usually do.

Fountains reached about 200 metres (660 feet), and the eruption plume rose to 5,500 metres (18,000 feet) above sea level, HVO said — a plume height based on National Weather Service radar data and also reported by the National Weather Service and the Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center. FOX Weather, reporting USGS observations, said the episode opened with fountains of about 100 feet from the north vent and smaller fountains from the southwest vent, then built through the afternoon.

By 4:43 p.m. HST the fountain height had decreased to about 100 metres (330 feet), and at 6:01 p.m. the fountaining ended abruptly. All eruptive vents and lava flows remained confined to Halemaʻumaʻu crater within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, as they have throughout the eruption sequence that began on December 23, 2024.

HVO estimated that approximately 6 million cubic metres (8 million cubic yards) of lava erupted during episode 56, at an average effusion rate of about 200 cubic metres per second. Peak effusion reached about 530 cubic metres per second at around 2 p.m. HST on November 5.

The mountain's tilt told the same story. The Uēkahuna tiltmeter recorded 17 microradians of deflationary tilt during the episode — the summit deflating as magma drained into the eruption — and inflationary tilt resumed immediately after fountaining ended, the pattern that has preceded each episode in this sequence. Most lava-fountaining episodes since December 2024 have lasted a day or less, HVO noted.

Surface-level winds carried tephra and the lower plume south-southwest toward the closed area of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, while higher-level winds carried the upper plume west-northwest toward Mauna Loa, HVO reported during the episode. Most tephra fell within the closed area of the park, with light tephra also reported at the Footprints area and Pahala.

The end-of-episode notice put the hazard plainly: tephra fall from volcanic ash clouds is greatest within about 3 miles (5 km) of the vents, while lighter ash and Pele's hair can stay suspended and travel much farther. The National Weather Service's special weather statement during the eruption said ash fallout would likely occur over the Kau District and Highway 11 west of the town of Volcano and possibly as far southwest as Pahala, and advised people to avoid excessive exposure to ash — an eye and respiratory irritant.

The end-of-episode notice kept Kilauea at Volcano Alert Level WATCH and Aviation Color Code ORANGE. In its accompanying aviation notice, HVO said fountain activity in the summit area was unlikely for the next several weeks following the end of episode 56 — even though summit inflation resumed immediately, which is how the clock toward episode 57 starts.

The crater itself stays dangerous between episodes. HVO's notice warns that lava flows on the floor of Halemaʻumaʻu and the southwest side of the caldera remain hot and may move slowly in the days after an episode, and the caldera rim around Halemaʻumaʻu — closed to the public since late 2007 — remains prone to cracking, slumping and rockfalls.

HVO itself runs three summit livestreams of the eruption, and WorldEye's dedicated Kilauea volcano webcam page gathers the summit views in one place, alongside the wider volcano webcams collection of the site's 74,229 cameras and the earthquake tracker that shows the seismic side of the same unrest.

Episode 56 is over, but the pattern of this eruption — pause, inflate, fountain — has repeated 56 times since December 2024. The cameras are where the start of episode 57 will show up first.