Tag: Hawaiian

A type of lava flow with a smooth, undulating, ropy surface — the molten rock flowing like thick syrup and cooling into gentle folds, coils, and glassy sheets. Pahoehoe is beautiful in the way that destructive things sometimes are — its surface records the liquid motion of stone with a fidelity that is hard to believe once it has hardened.

Term for lava flows that have a rough rubbly surface composed of broken lava blocks called clinkers. Aa flows advance slowly, their hardened crust breaking and tumbling forward as molten lava pushes from behind. This produces a layer of lava fragments both at the bottom and top of an aa flow.