News outlet’s Mount Rainier report ‘kicked up a bit of dust.’ Here are the facts
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- The Daily Mail reported Mount Rainier has shown unusual seismic activity over three days.
- However, the active stratovolcano is behaving normally, according to a monitoring group.
- PNSN cited misinterpreted radio interference, likely due to a station’s rime ice buildup.
Mount Rainier, the active stratovolcano that experienced an unusual but benign swarm of tiny earthquakes this past summer, isn’t suddenly showing seismic-tremor activity despite a recent news report that suggested fears were stoked about a pending eruption.
The Daily Mail, a London-based tabloid, reported on Tuesday that Mount Rainier had been “experiencing constant vibrations beneath the surface, thousands of tiny tremors blending into one another” since Saturday. Those rumblings reportedly were detected by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) over three-straight days across the volcano’s west flank. The patterns appeared more volcanic than tied to earthquakes, according to the Daily Mail story.
“Volcano watchers on social media spotted the fresh readings from PNSN, noting that vibrations under the mountain went from normal to chaotic in a matter of hours,” the Daily Mail reported.
The PNSN runs monitoring stations across the Pacific Northwest in joint operation with the universities of Washington and Oregon and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Seattle Field Office. The network offered another explanation on Wednesday.
“Some false reports are circulating that Mt. Rainier is suddenly showing seismic tremor activity — this is not true,” the organization wrote on its Facebook page. “The signal being referenced is actually radio interference, most likely due to rime ice buildup on the antenna of one of our seismic stations.”
The station in question, called STAR, is one of the last remaining old analog sites on Mount Rainier and sends data to a monitoring station on a farm in Graham via very low-power radio transmission, according to the post.
“This older, low-power system is more susceptible to weather-related interference than our newer, higher-powered digital stations,” the PNSN wrote. “There is no indication of increased seismic activity at Mt. Rainier in recent days. Other stations on the mountain are functioning normally and show normal background activity.”
While the Daily Mail noted that the activity it cited didn’t mean Mount Rainier was on the verge of eruption but instead was a warning sign to be alert, its story had amassed more than 540 comments as of Wednesday afternoon to the outlet’s question prompt: “Do YOU think Mount Rainier is heading toward an eruption?”
In an email response Wednesday to a News Tribune inquiry, Doug Gibbons, a PNSN field technician and seismology lab coordinator, noted that the story “has kicked up a bit of dust.”
“It’s just an unfortunate misinterpretation of the signal from STAR, which is misbehaving due to weather and rime ice building,” Gibbons wrote.
This story was originally published November 19, 2025 at 12:57 PM.
