Mile-wide underwater volcano ready to erupt off the West Coast

3 comments

1. **From CNN:**

   Things are heating up hundreds of miles off the coast of Oregon, where a large undersea [volcano](https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/science/mystery-volcano-1831-eruption-simushir?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_yahoo) is showing signs of impending eruption, scientists say.

   The volcano, known as [Axial Seamount](https://environment.uw.edu/news/2025/04/the-pacific-northwests-most-active-underwater-volcano-is-getting-ready-to-erupt/), is located nearly 1 mile (1.4 kilometers) underwater on a geological hot spot, where searing gushes of molten rock rise from Earth’s mantle and into the crust. Hotspot volcanoes are common on the seafloor. But Axial Seamount also happens to be located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge — an area where two massive tectonic plates (the Pacific and the Juan de Fuca plates) are constantly spreading apart, causing a steady buildup of pressure beneath the planet’s surface.

   The frequency of earthquakes has recently picked up dramatically as the volcano inflates with increasingly more magma, signaling an eruption could be near, according to researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array, a facility operated by the [University of Washington](https://interactiveoceans.washington.edu/about/regional-cabled-array/) that monitors the activity of Axial Seamount.

   “At the moment, there are a couple hundred earthquakes a day, but that’s still a lot less than we saw before the previous eruption,” said William Wilcock, a marine geophysicist and professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography who studies the volcano.

   “I would say it was going to erupt sometime later (this year) or early 2026, but it could be tomorrow, because it’s completely unpredictable,” he said.

2. Mark my words: Any little bit of dry land rising over the surface will have the Republicans scramble to name it after Trump.

3. As a Washingtonian, I hope this waits until the current presidency is over but nature isn’t like that. If we get the forecasted big earthquake we are going to be in big trouble. Even with a fully functioning FEMA it would make Katrina look like a cake walk. This is why pushing emergency disaster responses to states is such a ridiculous idea because in many, if not most, disasters the local governments are also devastated.

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