Residential areas on Hawaii could be threatened "within weeks or months" by lava that began flowing from one area of Mount Kilauea in June, reports the United States Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Jim Kauahikaua, the lead scientist for the HVO, explained in an announcement over the weekend that the flow is not an "immediate threat," but "could become one" if it continues on its current path, according to a report by Big Island Now.

As of Friday, Aug. 22, the front of the flow was 6.6 miles, or 10.7 kilometers, northeast of its vent, located on the flank of Pu'u 'Ō'ō, on Kīlauea's East Rift Zone.

HVO scientists, who mapped the flow during an overflight late last week, reported the flow was active along two fronts: the northern branch was advancing northeastward across fairly flat land while the southern branch had pushed into a ground crack within the rift zone.

As USGS experts explained in a statement, "the difficulty in forecasting the flow's exact path is that 'downhill of the flow' can be affected by subtle variations in topography, changes in lava supply and where and how lava enters or exits ground cracks along the rift zone."

The USGS statement further detailed that, since the Kilauea Volcano's East Rift Zone eruption began in January 1983, "most lava flows have advanced to the south, reaching the ocean about 75 percent of the time."

So, the northeastern path of the June 27 flow makes it unusual, but not unique.

"Over the last two almost two years, there have been flows in this general area," Kauahikaua told Big Island Now. "They haven't gone into the ocean since 2013, and most of the activity has been up to the northeast of Pu'u 'Ō'ō, which puts flows moving toward more easterly subdivisions. This is just the latest of those flows and it's going just a little bit farther south than the previous ones did. It's also narrower, so it's moving a bit faster."

The June 27 lava flow is currently contained within the Kahauale'a Natural Area Reserve, which has been closed by the State Department of Natural Land and Resources in response due to the ongoing volcanic activity and potential hazards, and the Wao Kele o Puna Forest Reserve, which has also been shut down by the DLNR and Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

"Up until about a week or so ago, we were only looking at it every two weeks, but we were getting a few satellite images in-between," Kauahikaua explained. "Probably our biggest gap in satellite images came when the tropical storm came through a couple of weeks back."

Now, he continued, "we're getting several pieces of information per week, and because of the continued movement of the flow, we are going to fly again ... then, depending on what we find, we may fly again ... to track this a little more closely."

Lava flow is tracked through the HVO's website, at https://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/activity/kilaueastatus.php.