Volcano
Taranaki and Raoul Island: 2 Live Cameras
Two New Zealand volcano cameras that stand apart from the Tongariro cluster: Mount Taranaki, rising alone from a coastal plain, and Raoul Island, an uninhabited volcano about 1,000km north of the mainland.
What you can see
Mount Taranaki is a cone that rises by itself from the plain on the western side of the North Island. With no high ground around it, the mountain stands straight up out of flat land. Its symmetry is such that a film set in Japan once used it in place of Mount Fuji.
That said, the summit is clear of cloud for very little of the day. Damp sea air runs directly into it, and the mountain makes its own cloud. A day when the whole cone shows is a win on its own.
Raoul Island is an uninhabited volcanic island in the Kermadecs, about 1,000km north of the mainland. With nobody stationed there, the camera is an eye kept on it from a distance. What it delivers is less a view than a statement of what the island is doing.
Cameras you can watch now: 2
All 2 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.
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Sample August 2026
Mount Taranaki
North Island · Volcano
A cone standing alone above a coastal plain. The hours when the summit is not in cloud are not many.
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Sample August 2026
Raoul Island
Kermadec Islands · Volcano
An uninhabited volcanic island about 1,000 km north of the mainland. The camera is there so it can be watched from a distance.
When to watch
New Zealand runs 3–4 hours ahead of Japan (an hour either way for daylight saving). Morning in Japan is already past midday there, so the early hours in Japan land on their late morning.
The seasons are reversed. Japan's summer is Taranaki's winter, with snow on the summit; Japan's winter is their summer, and the snow retreats.
Both are still images refreshed every ten minutes, and both go dark at night.
If it isn't showing
Both refresh as stills every ten minutes. Taranaki sits where damp wind off the sea hits it head on and makes its own cloud, so the frame ten minutes later often has no mountain in it at all. Raoul Island has nobody stationed on it, and anything that fails there is about 1,000 km from the mainland. At night neither shows anything.
Both are published by GeoNet, the New Zealand earthquake and volcano monitoring programme. The other cameras from the same source are gathered on Tongariro National Park and Whakaari / White Island, and all of them sit together on the New Zealand page. These two are the only ones standing away from that cluster, which is why they are separated out here.
Because of the time difference, the hour you open them changes what is in the frame. How early morning in Japan lands on a New Zealand late morning is set out in Which cameras are in daylight now. For a Japanese equivalent of a single cone rising from a plain, Mount Fuji looks much the same.
Where to find Taranaki and Raoul Island
Agencies publishing the cameras on this page
- GeoNet New Zealand (CC BY 3.0 NZ) — Official site
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.