‘Nothing looks imminent’: Oregon’s underwater volcano remains quiet

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — An underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon captured the media’s interest earlier this year when scientists predicted it could erupt soon.

The volcano is located about 300 miles off the coast of Astoria. It erupted in 1998, 2011 and 2015. Since then, scientists have been monitoring, trying to predict when magma could spill from it again.

While recent activity led researchers to believe an eruption could occur in 2025, Oregon’s underwater volcano has remained quiet.

“There’s not much new to report,” said William Chadwick, a geology and geophysics researcher at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center.

“Our forecast of an eruption at Axial Seamount ‘by the end of the year’ still stands, but I have to say nothing looks imminent.” 

Some other media outlets have recently reported that new research shows the eruption could happen any day, but Chadwick said there are no new updates since the volcano first piqued media interest in early 2025.

Chadwick maintains a blog on the OSU website, where he chronicles the eruption forecast.

The most recent update was posted July 29, the day an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Russia triggered a tsunami warning for the Oregon coast.

In that post, Chadwick said not much was happening with the volcano. He even said that the rate of inflation, which is what led researchers to think an eruption could happen soon, was actually decreasing.

“We can only wait and see, but nothing seems imminent at the moment since the rate of unrest keeps wavering up and down, up and down,” he said. “Of course, we don’t really know what it will take to trigger the next eruption and exactly when that will happen. But hopefully we’ll learn more about that triggering process by the monitoring we are doing now.”