As lava continued to pour vigorously from the ground through fissures at the foot of Kilauea Volcano, the month-old eruption on Hawaii's Big Island has entered a new, seemingly calmer phase inside the summit crater, government scientists said on Friday.
But volcanologists monitoring and measuring Kilauea's every move during the past four weeks hastened to add the latest change in the volcano's behavior, while undoubtedly significant, leaves them uncertain about what will follow.
The summit crater, which began ejecting ash and volcanic rock in periodic, daily eruptions in mid-May, has largely fallen quiet since Wednesday, Kyle Anderson, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geophysicist, told reporters in a conference call.