A swarm of earthquakes occurring over the past few weeks has intensified at a remote Alaska volcano dormant for over a century, a possible indication of an impending eruption.

Alaska’s rugged and frigid interior, where it can get as cold as minus 50 Fahrenheit (minus 46 Celsius), is not the place you’d expect to find an electric school bus.

Summer Myomick bundled her baby against the freezing winds whipping off the Bering Sea and stepped outside into a blur of blowing snow. It was a short walk from the school where she had visited relatives to the health clinic about 150 yards (137 meters) away, but the young mother could hardly have seen where she was going — or the terror that was approaching.

Alaska is burning this year in ways rarely or ever seen, from the largest wildfire in a typically mainly fireproof southwest region to a pair of blazes that ripped through forests and produced smoke that blew hundreds of miles to the the Bering Sea community of Nome, where the normally crystal clear air was pushed into the extremely unhealthy category.

In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only.