Washington DU'ers Where were you May 18th 1980

[bahrbearian]

and when will she blow this year , I say October surprise,,1st week.

[knowbody0]

1. i was at the base

on the cowlitz river. got covered in ash. so sureal.the world became shades of grey. i predict lots of rumbling and steam spewing but no explosion until spring

[bahrbearian]

7. You say Spring , I say Fall , One buck, Ya on ??

[knowbody0]

10. oh yeah

i see ya and raise a doe

[KT2000]

2. Thanks for asking!!

I was in Sequim visiting my father. We heard several loud booms that we thought were bombs of some sort. It was scary. My father turned on his police scanner and heard that people were calling 911 about the booms and there were reports of broken windows on the Peninsula. The police were responding that they did not know what was going on and they were trying to find out. Finally the dispatcher relayed the info about Mt. St. Helens.

A researcher in British Columbia determined that what we heard was the sound of the explosion bouncing off the Olympic Mountains.

October 4 is my guess

[AmandaRuth]

3. young single and living by myself

in a one bedroom apartment, one block from the water in Des Moines. Ahhhh, the memories.......

with you, will blow again in october

[Liberal Gramma]

4. We lived near Portland

and saw the huge cloud. At first we thought it was a forest fire, then figured out that St. Helens had blown. I have many friends in Yakima who tell horror stories about the week after the eruption. My favorite is the lady who was in church when it happened. When she went in, all was well. When she came out, the sky was dark, the birds weren't singing, dogs weren't barking. She said she thought it was the rapture---and she'd been left behind! LOL

[bahrbearian]

6. The silence was Erie , but there was an Ominous rumbling,

so subtle.

[bahrbearian]

5. I was in Enumclaw going to work in Morton.

I never heard the Explosion, but on the way to Morton, Tons of ash ,like snow fog 6 inches deep, the Deer and Elk were standing in the Cow Feild's with their heads down like they were sick. Everyone I talk to that lives along the Sound say they heard the Explosion.

[AntiCoup2K4]

8. Didn't even know it happenned until about 5:00 that night.

Had been camping that weekend (nowhere near St Helens, obviously) and wasn't anywhere near a TV, and had tapes playing in the car. The huge plume made up of what used to be the top 2,000 feet of the mountain was still very much airborne even 8 hours after the fact, so once I saw that in the sky, there wasn't much doubt as to what happenned. The major eruption didn't have any direct impact on Olympia, but we got a little bit of ash from a minor eruption the week after.

I'm not expecting much from St Helens this time, but just wondering when Rainier's gonna go. That's the one that could do some major damage. For anyone who might live in the Puyallup Valley, just remember that it used to be a lot deeper

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. I was sleeping when St. Helens erupted

I worked the night before but was woken up by it. I lived near Northgate at the time.

[flamingyouth]

11. I was eating cold cereal at the coffee table

Watching some dreck on TV - I don't remember what, exactly. I was 11 and in sixth grade. My dad was in the room with me and we felt the "boom." My mom was still asleep and it woke her up. Then they broke into whatever I was watching to tell us that the mountain had finally erupted. I lived in North Beach, near Golden Gardens, at the time.

Later that month, I made a model of Mt. St. Helens for my school science project. :D

On edit - will definitely blow in October (maybe even Sept. 30!)

[opiate69]

12. I was in Norwalk, Connecticut...

I was only 11... (I moved to Washington in '89). I remember seeing something about it on the news, but what I remember most was watching all the unbelievable sunsets with my dad from our back yard for a few weeks afterward.

[fortyfeetunder]

13. In the other WA

I have family here and called them from the East Coast to see how they were doing...

I hope she blows Nov. 2.

[kurtyboy]

14. At my folks house in Anacortes

I was standing on the deck after breakfast, and nine distinct "noises" ran through the house---boom, 1 second pause, boom, 1 second pause, boom....etc.

It was as much a feeling as a noise. I could see the plate glass windows bowed inward and outward by the force fo the blasts, but none of them broke. My eardrums could definitely feel the overpressure, although I think it was relatively slight at our distance (about 150 miles away...).

I walked back into our living room, and said to my father, "Boy, Taggart (a local quarry owner) is really doing it this morning!"

Dad jokingly replied, "Maybe Mount Saint Helens went off." We never thought that could actually be the case. I left their house for a Sunday job, and when I got there, my employer told me the it was the volcano.

I heard stories of windows being broken as far away as Victoria in the days that followed. The funny thing is that people just a few miles east of us never heard a thing.

As for my prediction? Shucks, I'm late, since the first salvo has already been fired. But it ain't the last, not by a long shot. Expect a bigger hiccup in the next two months. This little shot today was just how things got started back in 'eighty.

[transeo]

15. Edmonds

I was 3 and don't remember hearing a thing. I do remember my parents being very, very concerned and glued to the TV news. I can remember snippets of the news coverage as well and just not comprehending what was going on but knowing it was really bad and scary.

She's gonna blow, no question. October or November. I also think it is going to take us by surprise. She's got some tricks up her sleave and is teasing us for the moment. :hi:

[geniph]

16. I was in Ocean Shores

I was nineteen years old, visiting my then-boyfriend's family in Ocean Shores. I was out in the yard in a hammock when the ground shook and we heard a tremendous rumble. I thought we were having an earthquake - it sounded like one and felt like one. We thought no more about it until we started heading back home to Seattle that afternoon. The traffic was HORRIBLE going back up 101 - we couldn't figure out why until we got home. They'd closed I-5 through Centralia/Chehalis and routed all the northbound traffic onto 101. It took us nearly five hours at a dead crawl to get back home, where we discovered the mountain had blown its top and was no longer the most beautiful peak in the Cascades.

I lived in south Everett at the time, and never saw so much as a speck of ash. It all went the other way.

[Xavi]

17. I wasn't even born yet...

[newyawker99]

18. Hi Xavi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Xavi]

26. Thank you!

I know its been awhile since you said that, but better late than never!

[pfitz59]

19. Arcata CA....Humboldt State U.

watching the show on TV! WOW!

[Spirochete]

20. In Vancouver

sleeping off a hangover. I missed the whole thing, and it was only about 30 miles away.

[Evergreen Emerald]

21. The animals were silent

I was working at a TV station as an engineer in Yakima. It was early morning and I had just powered up the station and walked outside to get the morning paper. It was in a rural area with generally lots of animals, birds, cows, dogs. When I opened the door, it struck me that there was absolute silence. No birds. No cows. No noise. It was eeire. When I walked back into the station, a police officer was calling the station to tell me the mountain had blown. I called in the news crew and we spent the whole day and late into the night covering the story. Yakima was covered in Ash.

[Zorra]

22. In a garden in N. Central Washington.

And I heard the explosion, from pretty far away....I will never forget it, or that year.

[Barrett808]

23. I was going to high school, getting ready for some AP Calc test

In Silverdale, WA. Saw a woodpecker banging on a metal lamp post. Thought that was strange. Didn't hear about the eruption until hours later.

[ironflange]

24. Calgary

We didn't hear it, way too far away, but the next day all the cars had a thin film of grey dust that couldn't have come from anyplace else. Suited me fine, I saw what it was like in Spokane and Yakima.

[Aristus]

25. A Boy Scout camp less than forty miles from the mountain.

The wind must have been blowing the other way, because the first I knew of it was a scout coming over from the adjacent campsite (which had a radio) and reporting the news. Not long after, a whole gaggle of Hueys and Chinooks from Ft. Lewis thundered overhead on their way to the site of the eruption.

[Arcturus]

27. Recently born

I was one week old in Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.

My older brother calls St. Helens the second biggest natural disaster of May 1980...

[Quill Pen]

28. Asleep in Federal Way

I was nine. Around 8:00 in the morning, I remember waking up to the earthquake caused by the eruption; the quake wasn't much of anything by the time it got that far north. I thought my younger sister was shaking the bed or dropping stuff on it, so I sat bolt upright yelling "Knock it off, butthole!" or something similarly charming, only to find that I was alone in the room.