The world's largest volcano is erupting for the first time in almost 40 years. As you can hear and see, lava is flowing down the side of the volcano. The images come out of the Monolo on Hawaii's Big Island.
Island officials are telling surrounding communities that they are not in imminent danger as of now. Let's bring in our chief climate correspondent, Mr. Bill Weir. Good morning to you. Good job for 40 years, and then this.
What is it? This is so thrilling, you can't even tell you. The volcanologists have been waiting. This is one of the most measured volcanoes in the world. All kinds of volcanologists have been waiting for this event for a long time.
They're studying it intensely. And native Hawaiians, and I'll explain that in a second, but this is not the kind of volcano that spews big ash clouds like we saw in Iceland or other parts of the South Pacific.
It's the kind that sort of oozes this mesmerising lava. There's fountains, small and large popping that magma up there. The park. Volcanoes National Park is open with some restrictions today. So the people who are lucky enough to be there are going to see this.
And here is why native Hawaiians are so excited. Take a look at this. Luca is a native Hawaiian practitioner on Kilauea, the most active of the volcanoes on the Big Island. And he carries on the belief that this molten power is evidence of the goddess Palais.
Even when she is rearranging entire neighbourhoods with the kind of eruption that came in. 18 la is described with an affection normally reserved for temperamental relatives. Imagine if the whole world looked at their environment as their grandmother or their father.
They'll treat them very differently. And so that's how we try and treat our environment in the same way we look at them as family. To Hawaiian, Volcanoes National Park is as sacred as the Vatican, the Catholics or Mecca, the Muslims.
We are headed to pay our homage to Peso as we head towards the globe on the horizon of the Kilauea volcano. And it's up for him. And the line of tourists is already here as people race to get their best viewing spot as these splatters of magma and hopefully a glimpse into the lava lake.
That's from the Wonder list now streaming on Discovery Plus, by the way. But it's so cool that tourists will actually get to experience the double eruption right now. By the way, for Clarification, you said a big ash with an ash cloud, right.
We saw in what you just showed, you said rearranging neighbourhoods, right? So how do they know volcanologists? How do officials know that this is a threat to them? They can measure the seismic activity the number of volcanic earthquakes has doubled since September.
So they know something's coming, but they still don't know precisely when it'll pop. Right now, the lava is flowing northward. Most of the communities are to the south. That can shift. But the biggest concern really is what's in the air, the gas that comes off in pele's hair that's.
Thin strands of. Glass that, if you. Breathing them can be really dangerous. But right now, it looks like nobody's in any game. Fascinating.