How fast does lava travel

Technical Announcements. Employees in the News. Emergency Management. Survey Manual. Lava flows typically move slowly enough to outrun them, but they will destroy everything in their path.

Lava flows are streams of molten rock that pour or ooze from an erupting vent. Lava is erupted during either nonexplosive activity or explosive lava fountains. The speed at which lava moves across the ground depends on several factors, including 1 type of lava erupted and its viscosity; 2 steepness of the ground over which it travels; 3 whether the lava flows as a broad sheet, through a confined channel, or down a lava tube; and 4 rate of lava production at the vent. Emergency Management. Survey Manual.

While watching the Olympics a few weeks ago, I started wondering how our lava flows would place in typical competitions. Of course, it wouldn't be quite as simple as setting up a course, getting an eruption to happen at a convenient time at the starting point, and accurately timing the result.

No, we can only get lava-flow speeds by having the presence of mind during the start of an eruption - a hectic and sometimes frightening time - to record lava-flow locations at specific times and later calculate the flow velocities.

The fastest recorded Hawaiian lava flow was the first of three flows from the Mauna Loa southwest rift zone eruption. Pahoehoe flows are even slower than this. Like most fluids, lava flows faster if it stays hot. For example, chocolate syrup that's just been in the refrigerator may not flow at all until it is warmed over the stove. The hotter you can get the syrup, the faster it will flow when poured.

In this March 31, photo, magma churns and gushes in the lava lake of Mount Nyiragongo, one of Mount Nyiragongo is the ultimate symbol of death in Goma, the lakeside city it shadows and has overrun several times. Yet it's also a symbol of rebirth and resilience for a nation slowly emerging from war. In March, park rangers cleared Rwandan militias from its slopes and reopened the summit for the first time in a year and a half. The average human walking pace is about 5 kilometers 3.

On a flat slope, its basaltic lava moves no faster than 10 kilometers 6. An imposing, steeply sloped stratovolcano, it features both explosive eruptions and effusive lava outbursts, along with a pit of liquid fire continuously boiling within its crater.

Nyiragongo sits right along the East African Rift, the point at which the entire continent is tearing itself asunder.

Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.

In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. The finding could prompt volcanologists to revise their methods of predicting future eruptions. Nature Geosci.