Will the coast be toast?
An increase in seismic activity has prompted predictions that a mile-wide submarine volcano named the Axial Seamount will erupt near the United States West Coast by year’s end.
“The eruptions are pretty big,” Bill Chadwick, a volcanologist at Oregon State University who studies the fire-spouting formation, told KOIN.
Located 300 miles off Oregon’s Coast, the Axial Seamount is the “most active volcano in the Northeast Pacific, which maybe some people don’t know because it’s hidden under the ocean,” Chadwick said.
Indeed, the underwater flamethrower has erupted three times in the past three decades, blowing its stack in 1998, 2011 and 2015, he wrote in a blog post. Meanwhile, a recent study published in Nature identified multiple pools of magma beneath the volcano.
Researchers based their latest forecast on the fact that the 3,600-foot mountain experienced an uptick in seismic activity, similar to the tectonic overtures that preceded its last eruption ten years ago.
“In the last year, especially, there was the number of earthquakes,” said Chadwick, who noted that there were thousands of tremors in the vicinity ahead of the previous event.