Mt St Helens

[Treasure_Hunter]

Who remembers...

 

[ArfieBoy]

I remember. I was working in my yard and I heard a rumble. I looked around the neighborhood and didn't see anything. Looked at my watch. After I heard the news about the mountain blowing I calculated the time and I heard the rumble at the time the blast noise would have reached here in N.E. Oregon! Then for a weeek or so afterward we got light volcanic dust fallout.

 

[tamrock]

The thing I remember about it was I lived in Buena Vista, Colorado. A day or two after the big eruption we were dropped off at our car pool parking lots after a graveyard shift. Your vehicle were covered in the cool early morning dew, but that morning there were these black specks of a tiny grained particles, pretty much all the same size covering all the vehicles. Someone said, What's all this black crap all over my car. Then someone said it's all over everyone's vehicles. Then someone said it's gotta be dust from the Mount Saint Helen's eruption. Looking back I wished I would've taken a credit card and piled up a small amount of it to collect, because those particals must've blown high in the stratosphere and came down more than 1200 miles from the volcano.

 

[FreeBirdTim]

I remember Harry Truman, the elderly man who refused to leave his home. I don't think they ever found his body...

 

[DizzyDigger]

I was still living in So. Cal. at the time, but my parents lived in a small town NE of Seattle. They told me about how the sky was just dark with all the ash in the air, and it covered their roof and cars, as well.

I now live about 10 mi. from the base of 10,800' Mt Baker, another of the volcano's in the region. So far, it's played nice..

 

[ToddsPoint]

I’m in the Midwest so the only thing I noticed were the pretty sunsets.

 

[GirlWithWolf]

That is amazing, and makes me feel really, really small. (So does the pale blue dot)

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

 

[Gare]

Arfie Great Reply thank you for sharing with us

 

[DizzyDigger]

This thread got me thinking...and since we've been living in the shadow of Mount Baker for 22+ years now, I decided to look up what the status of the volcano was. Got a bit of a surprise, as I thought it was entirely dormant.

Volcano – Mount Baker | Whatcom County, WA - Official Website

Information about Mount Baker

www.whatcomcounty.us

"While the most recent eruption of new lava from Mount Baker occurred 6,700 years ago, other hazardous activity has caused impacts on the volcano's slopes and downstream. Between the 1840s and 1880s, hydro-thermal explosions and collapses rocked Mount Baker. Some resulted in lahars (volcanic mud flows). A reheating in 1975 and access closures on the mountain's south and east flanks reminded local people of the volcano’s potential to disrupt their lives. "

The county recently installed a new voice and siren warning system, and it's in case the dams above Newhalem blow out, and also for lahar's.

Here is a pic of Mt. Baker that I took about a mile from our home.

 

[ArfieBoy]

This thread got me thinking...and since we've been living in the shadow of Mount Baker for 22+ years now, I decided to look up what the status of the volcano was. Got a bit of a surprise, as I thought it was entirely dormant.

Volcano – Mount Baker | Whatcom County, WA - Official Website

Information about Mount Baker

www.whatcomcounty.us

"While the most recent eruption of new lava from Mount Baker occurred 6,700 years ago, other hazardous activity has caused impacts on the volcano's slopes and downstream. Between the 1840s and 1880s, hydro-thermal explosions and collapses rocked Mount Baker. Some resulted in lahars (volcanic mud flows). A reheating in 1975 and access closures on the mountain's south and east flanks reminded local people of the volcano’s potential to disrupt their lives. "

The county recently installed a new voice and siren warning system, and it's in case the dams above Newhalem blow out, and also for lahar's.

Here is a pic of Mt. Baker that I took about a mile from our home.

View attachment 2207057

Hi DD. Great pictures of Mt. Baker. I think all the Cascade volcanos from at least Mt. shasta and northward are all considered active. I might have that wrong because I'm no volcanologist, but it seem like I have read that in the past.

 

[golddigger14s]

I was driving from Idaho State to San Diego when it went off.

 

[Oregon Viking]

#45YearsAgo at #MountStHelens, May 18, 1980, 2:45 PM: Why such destruction downstream so many hours after the eruption?
In mid-afternoon, reporters for The Longview Daily News charter a small helicopter to fly up the North Fork Toutle River. About 2:30 PM, a churning wall of mud, trees and debris swallows Camp Baker, overturning bulldozers and trucks like toys.
Flying down-valley, the flowing mud engulfs a bridge and it lifts, bumps along a hundred yards and lodges. They fly down over houses and gardens by a calm river and watch as the muddy debris comes to devour them. After refueling, they fly up to the concrete slab of Coal Bank Bridge. The rising mudflow stacks logs against it. A loud squeal of steel, a white puff and the deck breaks loose. The bridge lifts off its piers, hangs in the trees as the north side swings down the current. One end dips and the whole span sinks beneath the mud.
At about the same time the first mudflow peaked downstream in early afternoon, a second larger mudflow was developing on the massive debris avalanche deposit in the devastated upper part of the North Fork Toutle River valley. This massive mudflow moved more slowly, peaking around midnight at Castle Rock.
Image, taken May 22, 1980, by B. Christiansen, shows floating logs and flooding downstream of the volcano, where the Cowlitz River empties into the Columbia River.

 

[Oregon Viking]

I was in the town of St. Helen's that day. Why... I don't remember exactly... Friend of my parents moving or something. I was 14 years old. I think the reason we weren't in a hurry was the Columbia river was between us and the eruption.

I missed this thread!!

 

[GirlWithWolf]

I was in the town of St. Helen's that day. Why... I don't remember exactly... Friend of my parents moving or something. I was 14 years old. I think the reason we weren't in a hurry was the Columbia river was between us and the eruption.

I missed this thread!!

That’s awesome but scary at the same time. What a memory.

 

[CoinsAndThings]

I was in Dayton, Ohio for some company training when it blew. There was about 15 of us in our class. For some reason all of us were given handles to put on T-Shirts for when we graduated from our training. For instance one lady was called Mom, etc. There was also a very cute young blond lady in our class who was from a small town not to far from Mount St. Helen's. This would never do in today's PC world, but her handle on her T-Shirt was "HotAsh"
I think she was OK with it. Today all of us would have been fired on the spot.

 

[ISmellGold]

Who remembers...

They still say ash still clogs the rivers and streams downstream from the eruption.
Incredible footage
Probably up there with the Hindenburg footage

 

[ArfieBoy]

I still have about a gallon jar of Mt. St. Helens ash "somewhere" in my house. It was collected from my wife's employer's car. He was driving through central Washington the day the mountain blew up.

 

[Crow]

The news of eruption went all around the world. It was one the first televised eruption events. And many lessons was learned from it. A stark reminder of the power of mother nature.

Crow