What you can see on the Spurr cams
The cams show the ice-covered summit and Crater Peak, the vent on the volcano’s southern side that produced the most recent eruptions, and a long view across Cook Inlet from Anchorage. On clear days Spurr is the high peak on the city’s western skyline, and any ash plume would show up there first.
Snowy ridges on the flank of Mount Spurr
From a monitoring station at about 975 m on the south-eastern flank of Mount Spurr, the camera looks north-north-west up the mountain. The snow-covered ridges and rock crags of the upper slopes fill the frame, with deep shadows in the gullies when the sun is low, and the cloud deck often rests just above them.
Crater Peak, the vent on Spurr's southern flank, erupted in 1992 and sent ash over Anchorage, about 125 km to the east. The camera is part of the network the Alaska Volcano Observatory keeps on the volcano for exactly that reason.
Across Cook Inlet from Anchorage
From high in Anchorage, the camera looks north-west over the city's towers to the grey water of Cook Inlet. The long, low mountain on the far shore is Mount Susitna, known in Anchorage as the Sleeping Lady, and on clear days the higher peaks to the west, Spurr among them, stand on the skyline beyond, about 125 km away.
It is a weather camera of the Federal Aviation Administration, there to show pilots the visibility across the inlet. Ships on the water give the scale of the inlet between the city and the far shore.
Eruptions and unrest
Spurr’s recent eruptions all came from Crater Peak: in 1953, when ash fell on Anchorage, and three times in 1992, when an ash cloud again reached the city and closed its airport. In 2024 and 2025 the volcano went through its strongest unrest in decades, with thousands of small earthquakes and swelling of the ground, and the observatory warned that another eruption from Crater Peak was possible. The alert box on this page shows where things stand now.
When to watch Spurr
Cook Inlet is often cloudy, so check the cloud forecast first. The Anchorage cam is only useful in daylight, which lasts about 19 hours in June and less than six in December.
Around Spurr
Spurr is the northernmost of the Cook Inlet volcanoes, a line of peaks that also includes Redoubt, Iliamna and Augustine. From Anchorage, the best views across the water are from the coastal parks and trails on the west side of the city, where on the clearest days Denali also appears far to the north. The land around the volcano itself is roadless wilderness, reached only by small plane or helicopter.
