Live camera
Mount Ruapehu, east live camera — North Island
The same crater-lake summit seen from the eastern flank. Snow lies differently here than it does on the northern view.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
A GeoNet camera showing Mount Ruapehu from the east. Same mountain as the northern camera, but the change of angle changes how the snow reads.
It stands 2,797 metres, the highest point on the North Island. The monitoring focuses on the level and temperature of the summit crater lake and on how much steam is escaping. Ruapehu is watched from several bearings because when wind carries the steam away, a single downwind camera will misjudge the volume. Compare the three and you can also work out the day's wind direction.
The eastern flank takes the first sun of the day, so through the local morning the boundary between snow and rock is at its sharpest.
The lake at the summit has a name, Te Wai a-moe. Its temperature rises and falls on a cycle of some months, moving between about fifteen degrees and close to forty. A warming spell does not by itself mean an eruption is near, so GeoNet reads the temperature alongside the level, the colour of the water, the earthquakes and what the gas is made of. The water is strongly acid from the sulphur, and the outflow shows up in the chemistry of the river below.
New Zealand runs three to four hours ahead of Japan, so a Japanese morning is the middle of the local day. Seasons are reversed. The westerly is strong here: one camera can be completely white while another angle is clear.
About this camera
| Place | North Island |
| Format | Still, every 10 min |
| Time zone | Pacific/Auckland (UTC+12, DST UTC+13) |
| Category | Volcano |
| Operator | GeoNet New Zealand |
| Terms of use | CC BY 3.0 NZ |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.
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