As the West Coast weathers catastrophe after tragedy when it comes to the natural surroundings, another situation is percolating deep beneath the surface, experts advise.
A volcano that's several miles wide, a mile deep and 300 miles from the Oregon Coast is on the verge of eruption.
But because the volcano is still 4,500 feet below the Earth's surface, an eruption shouldn't cause any problems above ground, experts confirm.
“Though if you lowered a hydrophone you might hear it because there’d be a lot of commotion going on," Bill Chadwick, a volcanologist with Oregon State University, told USA Today.
Called the Axial Seamount – it's the “most active submarine volcano in the NE Pacific” – according to Surfer Magazine, and it's part of the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire,” the most volcanically active region in the world.
Chadwick is one of several scientists monitoring it from the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Scientists at Oregon State University.
So how do they know an eruption is coming soon?
"An extensive series of instruments around the volcano indicate the magma reservoir as much as a mile below the volcano’s caldera has been refilling with magma since its last eruption, gradually inflating so that it's bulging upward," AOL reported.
But because it's so deep it will not cause a tsunami or an earthquake, Chadwick said. The Axial Seamount last erupted in 2015.