1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens as viewed by climbers on nearby Mt. Adams.
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if this happened now there would be idiots twerking in front of the eruption
My family lived in Tacoma when Mt. St. Helens erupted. I was 5 and I remember vividly standing in my backyard with a gathering of neighbors, watching the eruption in the distance through a telescope.
Eventually the ash reached us and we had to go inside.
The next day there was ash on everything. It was so deep I took a Mason jar and just scooped a bunch of it up.
About a year later we moved to the east coast and that little jar was what I brought for show and tell for the next few years.
That, and the story in the newspaper about the old guy who lived at the base of the mountain and wouldn’t evacuate when they told him an eruption was imminent because he was convinced it wouldn’t, are the two things i remember most from my childhood.
Ive never seen those pictures before. I would have sat down too if I saw that go off in front of me.
*”In total, Mount St. Helens released 24 megatons of thermal energy, seven of which were a direct result of the blast. This is equivalent to 1,600 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima”*
I watched her less than 100 miles due south just after it blew. It was a super clear blue sky that day. The wind ultimately dumped the ash on the greater Portland area and the fallout was like it was snowing in May — definitely wore masks during that one.
“Oh shit, glad I chose this one.”
Those are awesome pics! I haven’t seen those before. You should post on r/history. A lot of people would love to see these pics!
The scale of that is staggering.
RIP Dave Johnston. He worked for the USGS, killed in the blast. He was covering for someone else that day, and she’s been suffering survivors guilt ever since.
I hate getting to the top of some huge mountain, and there’s nothing going on.
More like old school terrifying
Had a friend who lived 180 miles away and heard the explosion. Loud enough to make them think a deer or a person had slammed into the wall of their house.
I was around for this but not quite old enough to remember it.
My folks were both students at WSU when the mountain went up.
They met while huddling in the same building because many weren’t sure exactly what was in the ash cloud, and if it could be fatal to inhale.
Did a road trip with Mt St Helen’s as part of it ~ 10-11 years ago with my wife and kids, and what struck me was the scale of the destruction Some of the recordings in the interpretive center were disturbing and haunting.
The strangest thing to me though was that the park service or whoever at some point did some tree planting in the area, and the effect was that there was a growth of 25 year old spruce or pine or whatever it was and all the trees were identical in height, species and spacing. It looked out of place and quite artificial to tell the truth, lol.
Recommend that place for a bucket list to anyone though.
Where I was working, far, far from Mt. Helens, we had an intern who took a week off for his honeymoon. When he got back, we found out that they had gone camping in western Montana, miles from anywhere and completely cut off. He said they freaked out pretty hard when ash started falling. They thought there must have been some sort of nuclear war. They had to hike for several hours before they got to somewhere where they could find out what the hell had happened.
I lived in Bellevue at the time, east of Seattle, the ash went around us on both sides, we drove down and I watched the mud and buildings going down the tutle? River
Knocked me on my fookin ass I tell ye
I lived in Seattle (Mt. Baker neighborhood) when Mt. Saint Helen blew, I was 5 and I remember getting knocked out of bed and wondering why I was on the floor all of a sudden. When we got up that morning the sky was this awful Hugh of yellow and grey and there were inches of ash that had already fallen on everything. We still have several baggies of that ash and lots of pictures from that day. It was one of the craziest moments of my life!
My dad watched from his back door, as St Helen’s blew. He lived in Vancouver (Washington).
My brother’s gf was killed by the blast, even though she was in the green zone. I don’t think the scientists thought it would be such a powerful eruption.
Mother Nature can be unpredictable and very dangerous.
It was a fine swell day
Rational or not, I’d be thinking the mountain I was on would be next, and soon.
My Aunt lived not far away. She told me that they shoveled the ash like snow.
I lived clear on the other side of the country, but several days after the eruption, our skies had a red tint for several days from the ash in the atmosphere.
May 18, 1980. Anybody from the Pac NW old enough knows that date. We watched from my backyard in Battleground, WA. It was like it was happening next door. Everything blew North and East, but the ash was like the finest gray sand that fell everywhere. It was almost like flour.
The only reason my wife wasn’t canoeing on Spirit Lake that morning, which was on Mt. Saint Helens and got obliterated, was that she and her bf started out a little late and decided to go someplace closer. She said the eruption sounded like a gigantic piece of construction equipment starting up, but it lasted way too long so they both freaked out and paddled to shore like maniacs. But they were nowhere near the deadly cloud.
That’s crazy@!
So whats the super volcano at Yellowstone compared to this?
We lived in Seattle. I was 3. Mom said I slept through the whole thing. Sounds about right.
I was in the 6th grade in Wenatchee Washington. Got out church, noticed a strong sulfur smell and dark clouds.
They’d been talking about the build up for weeks and it finally happened.
Nice shot. I remember that day very well. I saw the plume and it wasn’t long till eruption. So sad. My daughters teacher’s husband and two sons were camping there. They didn’t make it.
This happened shortly before Empire Strikes Back premiered. The scene outside the movie theater was very apocalyptic. Dusty ash had coated everything in gray, cars were kicking it up, and everybody lined up outside the theater was swaddled in hats, rain ponchos and improvised protective gear – bandanas, shop dust masks, various kinds of goggles, even a couple full-out gas masks. We looked like a bunch of alien refugees on a dying planet.
Are there any more pictures from this series? I’ve also never seen these before. I grew up (born 1983) 25 miles south of they mountain.
The amount of trees still floating in Sprirt and other nearby lakes 42 years later is astounding!!! Check out Google Maps!
I was laying in bed, that weekend morning. Woke up about twenty minutes before, house shook as the boom happened hopped out of bed and yelled up to my folks in the loft that the mountain had gone up. They were like no it hadn’t that it was someone blasting at the top of the hilltop across the straight. Heard an hour later on the cbc that it had erupted. Living Port Angeles at the time out towards forks.
And it’s gonna be a fine swell day
I’d probably sit down too.
I don’t think I’ve seen this pictures. Incredible.
I’m from Colorado and I was about 12 when it happened. I remember we had about a decent dusting of ash on everything. Enough so that I was able to write my name all over my mom’s car lol
Please tell me there’s more than two pictures..
Worked a pipeline project in the early 80’s in North Dakota. A lot of the road ditches and hill tops were still grayish white with dust. Picked up in the wind and got nasty fast
I remember this vividly! 1980 the big news was the hostages in Iran (“Today is day 238.”), the US Olympic Hockey Team defeating the Soviet Union’s team on their quest for a gold medal (“Do you believe in miracles?”), Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Mount St. Helens erupted.
It was technically an eruption, but that always feels like a lacking descriptor. Mount St. Helens developed a gas pocket that made the mountainside visibly bulge, a bulge that grew by multiple feet per day until the *mountain’s structural integrity failed*. It collapsed and then immediately exploded, not in an upward gout of ash, but an outward, planetary shotgun of superheated gas and debris – a pyroclastic flow.
This mountain tore itself apart and then scattered itself across the globe. I’d sit the fuck down, too.
Shock and awe.
Powerful picture.
Wow. Washington native but never seen these photos before. Thanks for sharing.
Was it mt. St Helen’s where that guy was looking st it and it erupted and he knew he was fucking dead so just took photos?