A look back 35 years after Mount St. Helens' deadly eruption

[IDemo]

SEATTLE (AP) - Thirty-five years ago, Mount St. Helens in southwest Washington state erupted, killing 57 people, blasting more than 1,300 feet off the top and raining volcanic ash for miles around. Today, the volcano has become a world-class outdoor laboratory for the study of volcanoes, ecosystems and forestry, as well as a major recreational and tourist destination.

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THE DAY IT BLEW

Within minutes of a 5.1 earthquake that hit at 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, the volcano's north flank collapsed, triggering the largest landslide in recorded history. That set off powerful explosions that sent ash, steam, rocks and volcanic gas upward and outward. The lateral blast scorched and flattened about 230 square miles of dense forest.

Soon after, a plume of volcanic ash rose over 80,000 feet and rained down as far as 250 miles away in Spokane. Pushed by winds over the next few days, the ash cloud traveled east across the U.S. and encircled the globe in 15 days.

The eruption blew about 1,314 feet off the volcano and created a horseshoe-shaped crater in the mountain, which now stands at 8,363 feet.

http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/A-look-back-35-years-after-Mount-St-Helens-deadly-eruption-304058161.html

[fredamae]

1. An Unforgettable day

I was visiting friends on the OR Coast that day. Early in the morning, shortly after waking up...I heard what sounded like multiple sonic booms in rapid succession-moderate shaking etc....but this was eerily different.

My friends husband was in the USAF and when he got up, I asked about the "different sonic booms" I had heard earlier.
I had not yet turned on the tv. He did and there it was....boiling ash, a mountain top completely gone...Mud Flows....destruction like I had never seen before.

Being less than 100 miles away.. I was terrified.
We moseyed on down to the beach and the ocean was Waaaaaay offshore, all the rocks in the bay were bared for all to see and the bank of sand leading down to the beach was now a sharp decline where once slopping dunes once were.

I decided it was time to get the hell out of there...fetch my kids from their grandparents a few miles south and head home..which was at that time...near central Oregon.
The ash plume was going N/NE..
We made it home safely...but a few days later we received a moderate ash dump that coated everything.

It was a terrifying experience in spite of the fact I was relatively safe. It could have been so much worse....for all of us.

[KT2000]

5. interesting - the sonic booms

We had the same thing on the Olympic Peninsula. We turned on the police scanner and no one knew what was going on but there were reports coming in of broken windows.

Someone at a university in Victoria BC was trying to figure out what the booms were about. He concluded they were the sound bouncing off the Olympics. But if you heard them in Oregon that would not hold up. Still some mysteries.

I had never heard about the low water at the beach - wonder what caused that?!

Yes - it was frightening.

[fredamae]

6. I don't know

re: the water. I understand that is signature for a tsunami. But that never happened. Whatever happened, happened before we got there.
Oddly there was no sign of tsunami type debris anywhere...so...yes, puzzling.

It was in a little community near Pacific City where commercial Dory fishing is king. They chose that place Because of a sandy bottom in the cove to land their boats up on the beach..no docking. Those exposed rocks really stalled their economy for quite sometime until it naturally restored itself.
It was surreal to see it. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.

To this day...I can recite back the exact pattern of "booms".
boom, boom, boom, boom-boom...BOOM. And I could "feel" them.

Not a typical "sonic boom" thang.

[niyad]

2. thank you for the reminder.

even in CA, we got the ash from that monster.

[NV Whino]

3. i was in Seattle for the second eruption

I was sitting at an outdoor cafe when this vast cloud of ash shot into the sky. We had flown over Mt St Helens on the way in. We gave it wide berth on the way back to SF a few days later.

[madamesilverspurs]

4. That was really something.

The awe was compounded when I found my furniture and counter tops covered with the fine, dark dust that had made its way here to northeast Colorado.

Nowadays I take annual trips to visit family in Washington, and it still amazes to fly over the mountain that looks like someone took an ice cream scoop to the top.

[Left coast liberal]

7. I remember as if it was yesterday...

A layer of ash over everything. That was the summer we took a road trip to Montana and there was a ask all over the road.

[struggle4progress]

8. Victims of the Eruption

http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/mshvictims.html