Sunday morning at 10:47 am local time, a section of Ruapehu volcano's crater walls collapsed under the pressure of the crater lake. The sudden draining of the lake caused a devastating lahar that travelled down from its altitude at 2500 m to sea level. Fortunately, the flash flood of mud drained through a river channel and no people were injured or killed. Authorities closed roads and the nation's main trunk rail track near the southern base of the mountain on New Zealand's North Island.
A similar event happened in 1953 killed when a lahar killed 151 people when it washed away a rail bridge, plunging a passenger train into the raging torrent of mud.

Recent visits to White Island’s Crater Lake, including one on 13 February, have confirmed a continual rise in lake temperature since August 2006 from a normal range of 48-50ºC. In January 2007, the temperature reached over 60ºC. The last temperature measurement was 74ºC, the highest ever recorded in the lake. The increased heat flow caused accelerated evaporation, and the lake level has dropped over 6 m. Steam plumes have been observed over the island. A deformation survey of the crater floor showed no significant changes from recent months.

Recent photo from the web cam on White island

As of 13 April, seismicity at Raoul Island had returned to normal and Green Lake's water level was dropping. Raoul Island remained at Alert Level 2 (minor eruptive activity).

Seismicity continued to decline at Raoul Island through 7 April. In addition, Green Lake's water level began to recede, ending the water-level increase that had occurred in response to the 17 March eruption.

After the 17 March eruption at Green Lake on Raoul Island, no new eruptions occurred and seismicity declined through 24 March. New Zealand scientists found that many new craters had formed in and around Green Lake and that pre-existing 1964 craters had eactivated. The main steam columns were derived from Crater I, Marker Bay, and Crater XI. The eruption blew over mature trees as far as 200 m from the eruption site and deposited dark gray hydrothermal mud and ballistic blocks.

The Green Lake crater of Raoul volcano on Raoul Island (one of the remote Kermadecs Islands group in the South Pacific, located 625 miles northeast of New Zealand's city of Auckland) erupted early Friday, 17 March 2005. The eruption lasted about 30 minutes and was probably a series of phreatic explosions, throwing debris, ash and vapour out of the lake-filled crater.