On Hawaii’s Big Island, Kilauea volcano roared back to life and exploded as lava went shooting into air, boiling away a water lake and sending a massive plume of steam, gas and ash soaring into the atmosphere.

In the early hours of the eruption, lava mixed rapidly with water in the summit’s crater lake generating steam. As numerous people lined up to watch the billowing column of gas and vapour rise above the volcano, the sky above the eruption turned shades of orange and red in the middle of the night.

A senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Hawaii, Tom Birchard, said that lava poured into the crater and mixed with the water to cause a vigorous eruption for about an hour. Explosive reactions are trigerred when lava interacts with water.

Birchard said that all the water evaporated out of the lake and a steam cloud shot up about 9 kilometers into the atmosphere.

The water was the first ever recorded in the summit crater of Kilauea volcano. In 2019, researchers had confirmed the presence of water after a week of questions about a mysterious green patch at the bottom of the volcano’s crater. The lake had continued to fill since then.

The U.S. Geological Survey said that the eruption began late Sunday within the volcano’s caldera. Because of the location of the erupting lava, no homes were evacuated and there was little risk to the public. The crater, named Halemaumau, is located within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It was home to a longstanding lava lake that was present for years before a 2018 eruption caused it to drain.

The eruption continued throughout Monday and scientists said that it is hard to know how long it will last. With the water gone, a lava lake was forming in the crater throughout the day.

An advisory was issued by the National Weather Service in Honolulu, warning of fallen ash from the volcano. It said that an excessive exposure to ash is an eye and respiratory irritant. The agency later said that the eruption was easing and a “low-level steam cloud” was lingering in the area.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane said that the volcanic activity is a risk to people in the park and that caution is needed. A magnitude 4.4 earthquake had hit about an hour after the volcano began erupting.

The USGS said that it received more than 500 reports of people who felt the earthquake but significant damage to buildings or structures was not expected.

Kilauea had last erupted in 2018, destroying more than 700 homes and spewing enough lava to fill 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. An area more than half the size of Manhattan was buried in up to 80 feet (24 meters) of now-hardened lava. The lava had flowed over the course of four months. The 2018 eruption had occurred along a rift zone on the volcano’s flank where many residential neighbourhoods had been developed. The latest eruption was contained to the summit caldera within the national park.

The volcano had not erupted since 2018, but prior to that, active lava had flown for more than three decades. Kilauea has been one of the most active volcanoes on earth.

Image credit: U.S. Geological Survey via AP