"It was actually very impressive ... cascading out, making a nice arch and falling back into a kind of several lava rivers that were coursing downslope," said Tim Orr, a geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Orr said it had been years since scientists had seen a fountain this size. He said a recent surge in the amount of lava erupting likely caused pressure to build up.

"You have a gas-rich lava that's moving through the tube system and it reaches a point where it's able to break the surface and just cascade out," Orr explained.

Orr believed the fountain and other new breakouts caused the lava to stop pouring into the ocean in the morning. But by the afternoon, the flow had resumed.

"When we got there at 2, apparently the flow into the ocean had started again," said Quince Mento, Hawaii County Civil Defense administrator. "It wasn't at levels they had seen earlier, but it was quite substantial."

Flows going through the mostly abandoned Royal Gardens subdivision came close to Dean Schneider's home on Saturday. He wasn't there.

"There were also fires that burned along the edge of flow. The fires were within a few tens of meters of his house so it was pretty close this time," Orr said.

Orr wasn't sure exactly what would happen next but said he didn't believe the fountain was a sign that Kilauea was about to threaten people's lives or homes.

"There's nothing else going on," Orr said. "There's no earthquake swarms, no other signal that would suggest that something big going on. This is just part of the ongoing pattern."

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