The Home Reef Volcano is growing and changing shape with a new lava lobe covering an estimated 75,000 square meters on the island between 4-15 December 2024, Tonga Geological Services reported today.
“The Sentinel-2 images on the 7 and 12 December (Figure 3) shows an overall ~ 1000 square meters growth of the island between those two dates. This is a result of small explosions and persistent effusion of mafic lava. On 15 December the new lava lobe was roughly mapped out to be ~ 75,000 square meters. This area covers existing parts of the island and new northeastern shore lobe (Figure 4).”
Thermal activity was observed at Home Reef volcano on 4 December 2024, at 1:15 AM (Tongan time) through Volcano-Thermal satellite monitoring. The thermal anomaly has been observed up-to-date (Figure 1) and the volcan continues to show signs of moderate-to-low VRP activities.
“Over the past 24 hours, Home Reef has maintained moderate-to-low Volcanic Radiative Power (VRP) on the MIROVA scale.”
The 15 December imagery also show a long line of vapour and presumably ash clouds.
“The closest cloud to the island is more obviously gray colored and likely ash-rich, however, we see no indicators for major explosive eruptions at this point,” Tonga Geological Services stated.
The volcanic activity poses low risk to the Vava’u and Ha’apai communities. However, all Mariners are advised to sail beyond two nautical miles from Home Reef until further notice.
Home Reef is located 25km southwest of Late Island, 22km northeast of Lateiki (Metis Shoal) and 75km northwest of Mo’unga’one Island at Latitude & Longitude 18.992°S & 174.775°W.
Monitoring of the eruption is ongoing daily.
