Scientists have warned that an underwater volcano off the coast of the northwestern US is likely to blow sometime in 2025. The volcano, called Axial Seamount, is more than 3,600-feet-tall and sits half a mile underwater just 300 miles off the coast of Oregon. Experts made the prediction on December 10 after detecting seafloor swelling around Axial that mimicked a level seen immediately before an eruption in 2015. Seismic activity has also increased, with hundreds of earthquakes generated around the volcano per day and earthquake swarms greater than 500 per day. 'Based on the current trends, and the assumption that Axial will be primed to erupt when it reaches the 2015 inflation threshold, our current eruption forecast window is between now (July 2024) and the end of 2025,' researchers said in the new study.

The enormous underwater volcano off Tonga last month not only caused record plumes of ash into the air, but also led to one of the largest volcanic lightning events ever seen. According to GLD360, the ground-based global lightning detection network owned and operated by Vaisala, the eruption triggered nearly 590,000 lighting strikes that were'unlike anything on record.' The lightning almost engulfed the surrounding islands in the Tonga archipelago, according to Chis Vagasky, a meteorologist at Vaisala. 'I can't imagine what the people on the islands would have been going through, with a huge ash cloud overhead, a tsunami flooding everything they own, and cloud-to-ground lightning coming down around them,' he said. 'It must have felt apocalyptic.' Ash sent spewing into the air from the massive underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga was photographed by International Space Station astronauts.