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| Diamond Head in the Vog |
Out and about in the morning, we were surprised
at the amount of fog that was covering the mountains. We were also surprised
that our eyes itched and noses burned. It’s not the fog but the vog. Vog is a form of air
pollution that results when sunlight hits a mixture of oxygen, moisture, and
the effluvia, namely sulfur dioxide, other gases and particles from an erupting
volcano. The culprit in this case is Kīlauea on the Island of Hawaiʻi, with the
prevailing winds sending vog across to O’hau. We shouldn’t have been too
surprised that we would get some interactions since the Hawaiian Islands are
continuously formed from volcanic activity at a hotspot. As
the Pacific Plate moves to the northwest, the hotspot remains stationary,
slowly creating new volcanoes; the only active volcanoes are located around the
southern half of the Island of Hawai’i. The newest volcano, Lōʻihi Seamount, is
near the south coast.
