Hawaii’s volcano is raining green gems from the sky

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has spewed billions of tons of molten rock for the last 40 days – but is also raining green gems onto the island.

Residents have reported the green gems falling from the sky.

They’re not valuable, sadly. The mineral is olivine, magnesium iron silicate, and is commonly to be found around volcanic hotspots.

On Hawaii, it’s so common that there are ‘green sand’ beaches like Mahana Beach on Hawaii’s Papakolea coast.

The eruption is now in its 41st day and has already destroyed 600 homes.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) says that three volcanic fissures are still issuing, ‘vigorous eruptions of lava’.

“The three closely spaced lava fountains at Fissure Eight are erupting with maximum heights reaching 150 to 180ft,” the USGS said.

The eruption stands as the most destructive in the United States since at least the violent 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state, according to geologist Scott Rowland, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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Hawaii’s Kilauea’s volcano has produced extremely hot and relatively slow moving lava flows, which have engulfed hundreds of structures but allowed people to evacuate.

The Mount St Helens eruption also ejected pyroclastic flows, which reduced hundreds of square miles (km) to wasteland, and killed nearly 60 people and thousands of animals.