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- Currently in Portland — September 12, 2023: Temps creeping up
Currently in Portland — September 12, 2023: Temps creeping up
Plus, Kīlauea erupts in Hawai'i. You can watch a livestream.
Eric Holthaus & Stella Harris
September 11, 2023
The weather, currently.
A perfect partly cloudy day
Temps this week are creeping up each day as we approach the weekend, but Tuesday will still be pleasant. Highs will reach the mid-70s and we’ll get some clouds in the sky. Day to day we’re seeing the give and take as fall begins asserting itself, and summer has its last days. As such, we’ll be rotating between tank tops and sweaters for a while before firmly settling into our cool-weather wardrobes.
— Stella Harris
What you need to know, currently.
The Kīlauea volcano on the big island of Hawai’i began erupting on Sunday afternoon — its fifth eruption in the past four years.
Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, so this really isn’t a surprise, but it’s still a literally awesome reminder that we all live on a planet that is continually in motion at all space and time scales.
The Hawaiian islands were formed over the past 50 million years by the same plume of upwelling undersea magma in the middle of the Pacific. The island of Hawai’i is the largest and youngest island of the chain — Kīlauea emerged from under the ocean just 100,000 years ago. In 2018, the volcano’s summit collapsed and released a lava flow up to 500m (1600ft) thick that destroyed hundreds of homes and marked a shift into its current eruptive phase. In contrast, this week’s eruption is extremely minor — but still impressive.
The US Geological Survey has set up a live view of the eruption in Kīlauea’s Halemaʻumaʻu crater:
What you can do, currently.
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One of my favorite organizations, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, serves as a hub of mutual aid efforts focused on climate action in emergencies — like hurricane season. Find mutual aid network near you and join, or donate to support existing networks:
