Scientists are predicting that a volcano deep off the US West Coast will erupt this year.
Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano located about 300 miles off the coast of Oregon, is exhibiting behavior that indicates an eruption is imminent in 2025, William Chadwick, a research associate at Oregon State University, told ABC News.
It is the most active submarine volcano in the northeastern Pacific, and researchers have been monitoring it for the past 30 years, during which it has erupted three times, Chadwick said.

"There seems to be this fairly repeatable pattern from one outbreak to the next," Chadwick said.
The volcano has been inflating "like a balloon" as molten rock builds up inside, researchers have observed.
Since each of the eruptions has occurred when the volcano reaches a certain level of inflation, volcanologists believe it will erupt within the year.

The seamount is starting to reach the stages of inflation that preceded the last eruption in 2015, Chadwick said.
While the eruption poses no danger to humans, an accurate prediction could bring researchers closer to being able to accurately predict volcanic eruptions, according to the researchers.