Lava fountains reaching up to 700 feet high returned to the summit caldera of Kilauea today.

Large fountains reached heights up to 500 feet (150 meters) to 700 feet (215 meters) on Thursday morning, the USGS' Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said. The volcano began its current eruption on Dec. 23. It has stopped and resumed more than a dozen times since. The shortest episode lasted 13 hours, while the longest lasted eight days.

Several past eruptions were characterized by similar lava fountaining episodes, including at the start of the Puʻuʻōʻō eruption in 1983, the start of the Maunaulu eruption in 1969 and the 1959 Kīlauea Iki eruption.