What happens if a volcano and a hurricane meet in Hawaii?

(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

published 5 August 2018

Hurricane Hector is barreling toward Hawaii as a Category 3 storm Sunday with maximum wind speeds of 125 mph. It is not yet clear whether Hector will hit the islands directly or pass to the south of the archipelago as it moves into the central Pacific basin Sunday night.

Of particular concern is the southernmost Big Island of Hawaii, the most likely to experience the brunt of the storm — and the site of the ongoing Kilauea volcanic eruption. It is unknown what effect the storm's low atmospheric pressure could produce on the volcano. The hurricane triggering an eruption "is always possible," said Ken Rubin, a geologist at the University of Hawaii, "but the odds are actually slim."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.