HEY! WE’VE GOT THAT, TOO! (KIND OF)
If you plan on sticking around Hawai’i for another 10,000 – 100,000 years, you can count on seeing Madame Pele produce explosive sea-action similar to what’s being seen in the Solomon Islands right now (see video above, via BBC Earth).
The USGS says the “Lo’ihi Seamount, Hawai`i’s youngest submarine volcano” (and by young they mean 400,000-years-old; as compared to, say, Mauna Kea which is estimated at a million years old), is “an active volcano built on the seafloor south of Kilauea, about 30 km from shore.” In the very distant future, it will become Hawai’i Nei’s newest island.
The Hawaii Center for Volcanology says “Although hidden beneath the waves, Lo’ihi is nevertheless taller than Mt. St. Helens was prior to the catastropic volcanism there in 1980.”
Still, Lo’ihi has got a long way to go. If measured from the seafloor, Mauna Kea — the tallest peak in Hawaii — is 10,000 meters tall (whereas Mt. Everest is only 8,848 meters). No wonder Lo’ihi needs 10,000+ years to catch up!
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