OT-Mt St Helens-40 yrs ago

[gasman]

Today is the 40th anniversary of Mt St Helens eruption. This article has a pretty good summation of the eruption and the time. https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/40-years-ago-last-moments-before-mount-st-helens-eruption-caught-on-camera/738277

Lots of businesses were complaining and threatening suit because a large area around the mountain was closed. The area depended on tourism but the closures saved hundreds to thousands of lives.

My wife (girlfriend at the time) were staying on the Oregon coast with some friends near Lincoln city some 150 miles from St Helens. I was on a morning run on the beach when I heard a couple of deep booms, not very loud but very real. I thought it might be construction blasting but it was Sunday morning. It sounded a little like a sonic boom but not exactly.
Got back to the rented beach house and told everyone but we all kind of shrugged our shoulders.
My wife and I drove back to Portland and chatted the whole time. Never turned the radio on. As we were driving on I-5 into Portland we came around a corner and there was a huge number of cars just pulled over on the side. we stopped and in the distance we could see the huge eruption going up into the sky and disappearing into a cloud bank at around 15,000 ft.

We all knew that the mountain had been bulging on it's north flank and that there had been a series of small eruptions and earthquakes over the last couple of months so many knew something was probably going to happen.
To actually see this massive eruption occurring from 50 miles away was one of the more amazing sights I've gotten to witness in my life. Made me feel very small.I also found out that the sound from the eruption went up and bounced off the upper layers of the atmosphere and was heard by many who were 50-200 miles away.
In 1982 my best man and I climbed the mountain to peer inside. Two days before my wedding. Illegal at the time but really cool.

Anyone else have a story about their experience ?

[Jaybee]

No personal experience - I was a few months old and living in the SW at the time, but my uncles in Yakima, Everett, and Bothell have some stories. I think I still have a little jar of ash somewhere.

Also, a good time to remember the compelling story of Harry Glicken (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Glicken)

[Blue Jays]

Wow, really cool first-person account and memory of what must have been remarkable to witness, @gasman.

[4151zero]

I remember that, and the incredible pics on the cover of nearly every magazine known to man at the time...

National Geographic seems to stand out in my foggy memory the most.

I was a very active BMX crazed child at the time, so if it didn't interfere with my riding then I wasn't too bothered... then my lil brother was born that same year.

[gasman]

Jaybee- thanks for the link to Harry Glicken. I hadn't heard of him.

I also have a jar of ash from the volcano and some pumice rocks nabbed from the summit in 1982.

[NHAero]

I recall going there in the 1990s and being amazed at the plants that pushed through and were seeming to thrive in what looked like a sea of ash and rock.

[Ozz]

I was at home, in the shower up in Mukilteo (30 miles north of Seattle), and heard and felt the "booms" and the window rattled....didn't know what happened until I turned on the news....

Pretty impressive place to visit.....met and rode with "Gasman" on an organized ride (Tour de Blast) there many years ago...pretty fun if you ever get a chance to do it.

[grateful]

I grew up in Yakima, I was twelve when it blew. Dad made me get up that morning to mow then lawn, said there was a storm coming. You could see the dark clouds approaching but we didn't know that the sucker had blown until my Grandfather in Twin Falls, Idaho called to see if we were ok. Twenty minutes later it was pitch black. Sun never came back out that day.

My folks owned a small business that I was at frequently as a youngster. This ladies name is Judy. She was the receptionist. And that is Jim, her husband.

[ORMojo]

I remember it well. Lived in Lake Oswego (Portland suburb) at the time. Friend and I drove to Council Crest and one or two other high spots in the area to get a good view. After a couple hours, we went to the Washington Square shopping mall to watch the news coverage on what were then the big screen TVs in the electronics shops, since we both had crappy tiny screen TVs at home.

[William]

We lived in Bellevue at the time, I think I was in jr high, laying in bed on a Sunday morning when I heard a loud BOOM. I got out of bed and grabbed some breakfast and then turned on the tv and found out what was going on. I put some clothes on and then went out and climed the tree on the side of the house to get up on the roof. I could see the huge plume that seemed to be shooting miles into the sky. I had spent a bunch of times with family and freinds hiking and camping around the base of St. Helens so I remember intimately what it was like to be there. As everything unfolded it was so hard to get my head around the fact that those places where pretty much gone.


Not my photo but one that always strikes me and brings me back when I see it...






W.

[grateful]

My wife grew up in Bellevue, went to Tyee Junior High.

[William]

My wife grew up in Bellevue, went to Tyee Junior High.

Chinook JHS for me.





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[72gmc]

I was growing up on a small farm in south King County. The yard was separated from the pasture by a split-rail fence that my dad built. I stood there with my family, just a bit taller than the fence, and looked south. The top of the fence led to the top of the gate, which led to the much longer barbed wire fence that separated our property from our neighbor's property. It all lined up, and pointed directly at the eruption.

I was 9 years old, crazy about dinosaurs. That was the first time I realized that I was just another critter, a few hundred million years later.

[MikeD]

We lived in Bellevue at the time, I think I was in jr high, laying in bed on a Sunday morning when I heard a loud BOOM. I got out of bed and grabbed some breakfast and then turned on the tv and found out what was going on. I put some clothes on and then went out and climed the tree on the side of the house to get up on the roof. I could see the huge plume that seemed to be shooting miles into the sky. I had spent a bunch of times with family and freinds hiking and camping around the base of St. Helens so I remember intimately what it was like to be there. As everything unfolded it was so hard to get my head around the fact that those places where pretty much gone.


Not my photo but one that always strikes me and brings me back when I see it...






W.


Ironic that there's a Ford Pinto in that photo, BOOM there too. :-)

[Elefantino]

Ironic that there's a Ford Pinto in that photo, BOOM there too. :-)
Hey ... I had a '74 Pinto!

[weisan]

I was not personally aware or present at this event but gas pal description of the big plume of smoke that he witnessed in his car when he turned the corner reminded me of the first major wildfire that I saw from a distance that happened at Bastrop State Park several years ago.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Z_tbGgHZN3K0iodxVGmGq_5WizwF9-umslaJCNIOW0vG05VVV08bNwGcJ6CFJHFwPv412DrIVjA9EH7p-y6bLgioQEpKjOj3PxTowVSsNAEThj6y6fkJtK7NgTt52WW5JEO fVgO4xrPEUcqITWatFgE-uZc37c6lDwyg7icDvwaQJ2Ojaw

[gbcoupe]

Hey ... I had a '74 Pinto!

74 Pinto was my 1st car. $200! Learned so much wrenching on that POS.

I'm on the other side of the country, so no live experience with the eruption. Can't believe it was 40 years ago!

[Dekonick]

I was on a flight from Seattle to Denver and saw one of the smaller eruptions. It was wild to see. Somewhere I have a vial of dust.

[rcnute]

I was a little kid and remember the stories about Harry Truman and collecting ash into jars.

By the way, if you can make it the Plains of Abraham and other rides on Mt. St. Helens are amazing.

https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/4550979/ape-canyon-to-plains-of-abraham-imba-epic

Ryan

[Dino Suegiù]

This is a beautiful book, of the aftermath, by a really great photographer.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51N3NG1QKJL.jpg

[KJMUNC]

I grew up in Oklahoma and remember watching the coverage as it was happening. Incredibly, we actually had measurable ash - up to a half inch at our house. I remember thinking “wow it’s snowing and it normally never snows here” but it was indeed ash. Crazy weather phenomenon caused ash to go that far.....has always captivated me since and the stories from those of you who were there.

[dave thompson]

You can drive on some of the roads between Spokane and Portland and still see traces of the ash that fell those 40 years ago beside the roads.

I was living in Redding California when the mountain blew. Redding is nearly 500 miles from Kelso Washington, which is a relatively few miles from Mount St. Helens. From my shop in Redding I could see the ash cloud rising very high into the sky.

[grateful]

I have a book of photographs from my father in law. He was a helicopter pilot for a big logging company (Weyerhaeuser). He was in the air shortly after the eruption scouting the logging sites for damage. Pictures of massive logging machines flipped like a Tonka Toys. Pretty amazing stuff.

[paredown]

I forget where I was flying from, but we flew by Mt. St Helens westbound after the eruption--pilot dipped the wings so we could get a good look--from the air the devastation was enormous--and I can't imagine what it would have been like up close and personal

[metalheart]

I most remember the ash after the eruption. It seemed to last for days. I was living in Hat Creek in Shasta County (California) when the eruption occurred. A local person collected some of the ash and used it to make a glaze for her pottery. I bought a set of dishes and such made from the ash from the eruption. It is an ongoing reminder that you never know what can happen in life.

[Gsinill]

Trip of a lifetime, 6 weeks RVing along the US and Canadian west coasts.
Big deal since I was only 16 years old and still lived in Germany.
Remember vividly how the climate was screwed up, with the exception of California, it pretty much rained every day and we even had snow in the southern parts of British Columbia.
Still a great trip that established my love for Canada and especially BC.

[Jaq]

Did a bike trip from Seattle to San Francisco in '82, and we headed sorta southeast over Rainier, then down past St. Helens. A few roads still had great big globs of lava that hadn't been cleared. Even then, though, the plants had already started seeding. It was amazing.

[cnighbor1]

National Geographic: Mount St. Helens isn't where it should be. Scientists may finally know why.
Note John Christiansen is mentioned
I talked to him about his experience
He has climbed Mt Rainer many many times
He was climbing 35 miles away and came to the top of a ridge and saw this explosive and the whole sky was RED
I worked with John at NBBJ

Charles
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/mount-st-helens-isnt-where-should-be-scientists-may-finally-know-why/

[gasman]

Thanks for all the stories .


My wife reminded me her cousin was there for the eruption-and way too close.

There were two couples camped off a forest service road north of St Helens and outside the "red" zone.

One woman woke up just before 7 am and said "We're need to leave right now !"
The others said it's a beautiful morning and why leave ?
" I just want to go. Now. I don't know why."

They started down the maze of forest service roads to get to the highway and reached it an hour later. They got out stretched their legs but looking up to the they saw a large dark cloud and they thought it was a huge thunderstorm. Just then several animals raced across the highway and a green forest service vehicle raced past them at breakneck speed.

They got in the van and suddenly large globs of mud and pumice rained down on the VW van. Just as suddenly they were engulfed in thick black clouds of ash and dust. Slowing to about 3 mph the driver tried to keep the windshield clean and stay on the road.

They knew it was about 6 miles to the nearest town, Randle and that there was a 24 hour restaurant there. They put wet bandanas over their face to keep out the choking ash. Dead birds and insects were falling all over the van.

Eventually they made it to Randle and almost drove into the side of the restaurant after they pulled into the parking lot They had to literally feel their way to the door. Inside were a couple of Coleman lanterns . The waitress brought them water and there were a couple other ash covered patrons. They washed up in the bathrooms and ordered cold sandwiches. A couple of hours later the ash lightened enough to make their way to I-5. The police had set up a roadblock at the highway entrance.Their van was the only vehicle that had come down the highway since the eruption. The sky was clear and sunny at this point. They pulled over and looked back at the huge ongoing eruption with a lot of other onlookers.
He says they all feel really lucky to have survived and experienced the escape.


This is the scariest story and closest call I've heard about St Helens.

[fiamme red]

I was going to elementary school on the other side of the country at the time, but I vividly remember reading about it in National Geographic magazine.

[wasfast]

I was in college in Klamath Falls at the time. My parents lived in Hillsboro, OR and I drove home about 7 days after the event. Starting around Salem, you could start to see white dusting. By the time I got into Beaverton, it literally looked like it had snowed with large accumulation on everything. It was almost surreal.

I later (2005-2010) lived in Vancouver, WA and went to Mt St. Helens for the day (only 60 miles north). I'd seen the pictures for years but seeing the size of the crater, the huge blast zone that leveled every tree, the size of the river valley. The scale only translated in person.

[Clean39T]

I most remember the ash after the eruption. It seemed to last for days. I was living in Hat Creek in Shasta County (California) when the eruption occurred. A local person collected some of the ash and used it to make a glaze for her pottery. I bought a set of dishes and such made from the ash from the eruption. It is an ongoing reminder that you never know what can happen in life.That's very cool. I really love pottery.....just can't beat good handmade stuff like that..

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[William]

It's hard to really understand the scale/magnitude of the destruction if you've never been there.





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[Ozz]

It's hard to really understand the scale/magnitude of the destruction if you've never been there.

W.

What I have always thought impressive was how the side of the mountain, slid down into Spirit Lake, pushed all the water out up onto the hillsides, and when it drained back, it took all the trees with it.

They are still floating at one end of the lake....as seen in pictures above.

[54ny77]

Did I read it correctly in that the blast radius of ~10 or so miles nothing was left standing?

[wasfast]

I don't know the specific distance but it was quite a ways. You can still see trees knocked over like toothpicks on the distant hills even now. Insane amount of energy "loosed".

[gasman]

I don't know either but at the Johnston Ridge visitor center 5 miles away the trees are knocked over like toothpicks. It's a great place to visit on a clear day once things are opened up again.

[gasman]

Pretty impressive place to visit.....met and rode with "Gasman" on an organized ride (Tour de Blast) there many years ago...pretty fun if you ever get a chance to do it.

That was a fun ride and we had nice weather to boot !

[William]

Did I read it correctly in that the blast radius of ~10 or so miles nothing was left standing?



Although the lateral blast began some seconds later than the debris avalanche, the blast's velocity was much greater, so that it soon overtook the avalanche. Calculations have shown that the blast's initial velocity of about 220 miles an hour quickly increased to about 670 miles an hour....


The near-supersonic lateral blast, loaded with volcanic debris, caused widespread devastation as far as 19 miles from the volcano. The area affected by the blast can be subdivided into three roughly concentric zones:

Direct blast zone, the innermost zone, averaged about 8 miles in radius, an area in which virtually everything, natural or manmade, was obliterated or carried away. For this reason, this zone also has been called the tree-removal zone." The flow of the material carried by the blast was not deflected by topographic features in this zone.

Channelized blast zone, an intermediate zone, extended out to distances as far as 19 miles from the volcano, an area in which the flow flattened everything in its path and was channeled to some extent by topography. In this zone, the force and direction of the blast are strikingly demonstrated by the parallel alignment of toppled large trees, broken off at the base of the trunk as if they were blades of grass mown by a scythe. This zone was also known as the "tree-down zone."

Seared zone, also called the "standing dead" zone, the outermost fringe of the impacted area, a zone in which trees remained standing, but singed brown by the hot gases of the blast....



The series of slide blocks merged downslope into a gigantic debris avalanche, which moved northward at speeds of 110 to 155 miles an hour. Part of the avalanche surged into and across Spirit Lake, but most of it flowed westward into the upper reaches of the North Fork of the Toutle River. At one location, about 4 miles north of the summit, the advancing front of the avalanche still had sufficient momentum to flow over a ridge more than 1,150 feet high. The resulting hummocky avalanche deposit consisted of intermixed volcanic debris, glacial ice, and, possibly, water displaced from Spirit Lake. Covering an area of about 24 square miles, the debris avalanche advanced more than 13 miles down the North Fork of the Toutle River and filled the valley to an average depth of about 150 feet; the total volume of the deposit was about 0.7 cubic mile. The dumping of avalanche debris into Spirit Lake raised its bottom by about 295 feet and its water level by about 200 feet.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/msh/lateral.html






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[William]

As an aside, quake activity in Nevada & Idaho is way up right now, this from today alone.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22autoUpdate%22%3A%5B%22autoUpdate%22%5D%2C%2 2basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22feed%22%3A%221d ay_m25%22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22 mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B30.524413269923986%2C-125.1123046875%5D%2C%5B49.95121990866204%2C-94.72412109375%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plat es%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restric tListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%2 2%3A%22newest%22%2C%22timezone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%2 2viewModes%22%3A%5B%22list%22%2C%22map%22%5D%2C%22 event%22%3Anull%7D

Mrs. William turned me onto this site, part of what she does has to take this into account with many other factors.









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[54ny77]

Thata some serious energy release!

As an aside, quake activity in Nevada & Idaho is way up right now, this from today alone.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22autoUpdate%22%3A%5B%22autoUpdate%22%5D%2C%2 2basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22feed%22%3A%221d ay_m25%22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22 mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B30.524413269923986%2C-125.1123046875%5D%2C%5B49.95121990866204%2C-94.72412109375%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plat es%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restric tListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%2 2%3A%22newest%22%2C%22timezone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%2 2viewModes%22%3A%5B%22list%22%2C%22map%22%5D%2C%22 event%22%3Anull%7D

Mrs. William turned me onto this site, part of what she does has to take this into account with many other factors.









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[William]

Thata some serious energy release!

Very true.

The Mt. St. Helen's anniversary got me thinking about all of this again. As much as it is possible that another one of the volcano's in the Cascade chain could go off again in our lifetimes, at this point I would be more worried about the Cascadia Fault (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/crust/cascadia.php) or the Yellowstone Caldera (https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/volcano.htm) going off (geologically speaking).

Posted this up a while back on a good book about the Cascadia Fault...
https://forums.thepaceline.net/showpost.php?p=1854400&postcount=566









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