Welcome to That's My World, hosted by Klaus, Sandy, Ivar, Wren, Fishing Guy and Louise. Click here to join us and share your world!
On May 19, 1980 I was living in Great Falls, Montana and that Monday morning when I awoke and looked out our bedroom window I was surprised to see that the ground was white and I thought it must have snowed during the night. But that didn't make much sense because it was a very comfortable temperature. Then my husband and I went outside and discovered the ground was covered with ashes and they were still falling as thick as snow. The wind from Washington had changed directions and it had brought the ashes from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens which had occured the day before, May 18, 1980. The whole town was eerily quiet throughout the day, school cancelled, people not going in to work. No one was quite sure just what it all meant or when it would end and would it have other consequences. A very new experience for most of us.
There are many unbelievable pictures and articles about this incredible event to be found online and I would encourage you to look for some of them. I have included some photos that I found online along with an account of what happened that beautiful May day in 1980 -- a day that so quickly turned so very dark. The photo above was taken prior to the eruption.
Mount St. Helens is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is 96 miles (154 km) south of Seattle and 53 miles (85 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from the British diplomat Lord St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who made a survey of the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is located in the Cascade Range and is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire that includes over 160 active volcanoes. This volcano is well known for its ash explosions and pyroclastic flows.
Mount St. Helens is most famous for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, at 8:32am which was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 feet (2,950 m) to 8,365 feet (2,550 m) and replacing it with a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater.[2] The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.9 km3) in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.
As with most other volcanoes in the Cascade Range, Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone consisting of lava rock interlayered with ash, pumice, and other deposits. The mountain includes layers of basalt and andesite through which several domes of dacite lava have erupted. The largest of the dacite domes formed the previous summit, and off its northern flank sat the smaller Goat Rocks dome. Both were destroyed in the 1980 eruption.
Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments.
This is Mt. St. Helens several years after the eruption, as you can see, she is considerably smaller than she was before the eruption. She still frets and fusses and grumbles ever so often even now, just not like that day in May, twenty-nine years ago.
Coldwater Valley Overlook prior to eruption in 1979.
Coldwater Valley Overlook in 1981.
David Hoole, wrote the following:
Washington the Beautiful
The rivers ran thick with liquid earth and mighty forests were brought to their knees. And the air was filled with the roar of a thousand battles, the dust of a thousand armies. Day turned to night. And in the blink of an eye, Mt. St. Helens, the brilliant southern jewel of the Cascade crown, self destructed in a pyroclastic spasm of rage and fury. She stands now in lopsided disfigurement- a curiosity, a burned out, blasted facsimile of her former self. Yet if one looks carefully enough there is still a haunting echo of a previous beauty- regal boned beneath scarred skin. Or is it a distant reflection of something more disquieting? Is it the realization that having endured her cruel fate, deep inside St. Helens an angry fire burns still?
46 comments:
I feel comforted that volcanoes are one problem with which I have not had to contend.
No, we have tornadoes instead.
Fascinating telling of the disaster, Sylvia. Thank you. It is reminiscent of Pompeii. When mother nature goes berserk it makes us aware of how impotent we are in her fury.
That was quite a blow-out all right! I remember we even got a fine layer of ash on cars, etc. in Calgary! Great photos!
Very interesting post for My World, as usual, Sylvia. It was an awesome event reminding us just how insignificant we really are.
Wow...I remember that and am happy that I wasn't near it. Great informative post on Mother Nature's power...Michelle..
Great and informative post!
Cheers, Klaus
What a fascinating post. That must have been so weird to wake up to the land covered in ash and quite frightening.
I remember this day very well. I was not close enough for ash of any relevance (if any at all), but it had quite an impact on my 15-year-old brain. I'm not sure I've ever seen a picture of it before. Thanks for sharing that!
Great post. Very informative
That must have been something! To be so close to it all. Wow! Thanks for all the accompanying information, Sylvia.
Wow Sylvia, how amazing to have been so close to her that you saw the ashes fall. I loved your storytelling in this one too, especially thinking of the angry fire inside: what incredible forces of nature volcanoes are.
I loved this post--what a story and such beautiful photos! Thank you!
29 years ago, doesn't seem like it was that long ago...we missed most of the ash in utah but watched with interest how one eruption changed weather patterns all over.
Drove through the area about a year later and the devastation was stunning. When I cleaned out Mother's house in Seattle in preparation for moving her back here, I found a bottle of the ash that my Father had scooped up. It was really really fine.
Nebraska Birding
I can't even imagine what that is like. It must be magical.
Oops! I just left my message about this post on the post below. Sorry, Sylvia!
Very informative and fascinating post. Thank you for sharing it. I remember this very well as we were living in Southern California and ash was falling as far down as we were, and the color of the sky was yellow. To try to envision what happened so far up north was incomprehensible.
Oups, we have ... nothing comparable in Austria :)
Great post, very informative, I can see now that Washington is a very hot place ;)
Such an eruption releases so much power and energy and is so destructive. I saw it on TV. It's not something you can ever forget, can you? Thank you for these photos and this interesting post, Sandy!
Sorry! Sylvia! I am getting tired!
I am glad you brought this to our minds again. We followed it inthe news at the time. The personal view of the eerie stillness as the ash decended is a nice touch. The best place in a situation like that is inside the house with doors and windows shut. You really don't want to breathe it in or be covered in it. Glad to hear everyone stayed at home that day.
Yes, I remember this eruption. It must have been frightening to live so close and see the fallout. Thanks for sharing this information.
This is one beautiful volcanoe. :) and lovely captured. Interesting info too. Thanks for sharing.
The effects of that eruption didn't really reach us this far south, but they were certainly felt this far east as the ash was carried along by the jet stream. It was all the news for a while there.
I've visited one ancient volcano overseas, but this is one I'd love to see, Sylvia .....
Great post, and I loved your prose at the end.
I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I remember the eruption seemed like a scary, world-changing event, even though I didn't see any ash.
Thankfully I've never experienced anything as savage as this. Thanks for a brilliant informative post and thanks for sharing your world with the rest of us.
The wonders of Nature will never cease to keep us wondering - thanks for sharing your thoughts, and snippets from pre-Internet days.
I had never heard about this, so thanks for informing me. A great choice of pictures to illustrate the power of nature.
Wow! Those photos are just awesome and really shows you how much had changed. I just saw on the news that Mauna Loa has not erupted on the Big Island for 20 years and could at any time. We shouldn't be so complacent and think it won't.
Sylvia: I so remember when that happened, thanks for sharing your thoughts on that time.
Great post!
I have never experienced one. Though earth quake tremors occur frequently here.
Wow, amazing post for this week's That's My World. Thank you so much for the information - I'm so glad to have stopped by at your blog today.
And thank you for visiting my blog :)
Thank you for an informative post and a reminder of that event which I remember. It's especially appropriate with Mt. Redoubt rumbling in Alaska.
In Greece we have the volcano of Santorini but we've never experience a blow out in my age.
what a fab account of the mountain...i can remember the story still...wonderful post and pics.
thanks for sharing with us.
We followed the story with interest all those years ago and were glad we haven't had to contend with eruptions of the like.
Very interesting post.
Great post! I have seen a lot of photos and video of Mt St Helens. In my last job, I worked with 2 men who had close encounters with the erruption. One was base commander at Fairchild AFB. They got the planes off to other airbases, but had to deal with cleanup of the ash. He said he called the Pentagon to ask for the manual on volcanoes. They said we don't have one. You write it. The other was an army guy who was sent with a cmminications group to take pictures of the aftermath.
I remember the event well, although we were living in England at the time. But my children wanted to know if this meant that we wouldn't get any American Apples for a while...I assured them that the apple crops would be forthcoming! Great post. COngrats on Post of the Day list
Sandi
I am darkly attracted to volcanoes. I live in a very small country dotted with them, mostly active. Perhaps that's why. Thank you for showing us the fierce beauty in Mt St Helens with your post. I remember that '80 day vividly, despite my young age then. Disatrous and fascinating at the same time. Your beautiful words: "...the air was filled with the roar of a thousand battles, the dust of a thousand armies. Day turned to night," paint a deeply poetic image. Grazie.
I was living in Yakima, WA when St. Helens blew. I was 9 years old. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was thinking that maybe I should write a post next year on May 18th, the 30 year anniversary of the eruption, of my first-hand experience living within 3 hours of a volcano eruption.
Yes, this was an event that has made an impression on so many people, even those living far away, like I did at the time it happened.
Congratulations on David's Authorblog Post of the Day mention! :-)
I'll never forget it! Thank you for the beautiful, yet terrifying, reminder of nature's power...it really puts life in proper perspective! Congrats on your mention in POTD!
Very interesting post. Great photos. Congrats on the POTD award!
I came over from David's POTD.
My parents stood on their porch in Portland OR and watched Mt St Helens erupt. Then they scooped up some ash and put it in a bottle to save for me, who was living in Indonesia at the time,the land of constantly erupting volcanoes. But Mt St Helens was part of my childhood and I couldn't imagine what was happening half a world away.
I stood in my yard in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and watched the big black cloud rolling toward me. I thought perhaps the end of the world had come. I had been fishing on the lake all day and had no media input I knew not what was coming.
Three years later I hiked thre old growth forest to the top of a ridge on Mt. St. Helens. I got to the top where I could see over the other side and it was like an alien landscape. Blackened bits of trees poked through waist-deep piles of ash. Bits of greenery grew here and there, but mostly the landscape was gray and black and "other-worldly." I stood and stared feeling much the same awe as when I first saw the ash cloud rolling toward me.
Post a Comment