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- Currently in Seattle — September 12, 2023: Cloudy and mild
Currently in Seattle — September 12, 2023: Cloudy and mild
Plus, Kīlauea erupts in Hawai'i. You can watch a livestream.
Loren Drummond & Eric Holthaus
September 11, 2023
The weather, currently.
Mostly cloudy, chance of p.m. rain.
Cloudy, mild, and kind of meh? Tuesday won’t be too warm (high near 70), nor too cold. Mostly just cloudy all day. A bit of a breeze might mean we get the good clouds (more movement, more beauty), but we’ll just have to keep our eyes to the sky and hope.
We’re looking at a 30-50% chance of light rain after noon, especially in the early evening.
It’s the kind of weather that could get you down, but honestly? After watching heat spikes and hurricane news from afar, I’ll take mild and meh as a PNW gift.
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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