Mt. St. Helens Day Today

[HPD]

May 18th 1980 Mt St. Helens erupted removing a cubic mile of rock and ash from the top of the mountain. The eruption took the lives of 57 people. About ten years ago I met and became friends with a fella who lost a brother in that eruption. He was down at the mountain falling timber for Weyerhauser. His pickup was found but never any trace of him.

Here is a picture of the second eruption, which came about a week later. This picture was taken by wife when she was a teenager. Taken from their home on Budd Inlet, Olympia Washington

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[Mikej]

I was living in The Salt Lake Valley on that day. All over the news, of course. We eventually got ash. Not enough so you'd really notice it, but there was dust dropping that you'd see on the cars. And we would get two sun sets. The first, nromal, yellow to orange color. And then a second that was darker and a deep red color for a few minutes. Weird.

 

[Jay Walk]

I was here. Church building shook pretty good.

 

[orygun]

My Senior Prom was the night before. I was up late and then drove to Estacada. It was cloudy and raining then. The ash puddled on my white car and looked black.

 

[Mikej]

I was here. Church building shook pretty good.

View attachment 2094876

That had to be something!! WOW

 

[Jay Walk]

That had to be something!! WOW

I thought so, until an old timer told me he was in a canoe out fishing on horseshoe lake. Went from sunshine to no longer could see the shoreline and sticks falling from the sky. Five hours driving 35 miles to Randle.

 

[RVTECH]

I was backpacking with a GF up in the Three Sisters Wilderness and woke up to the sounds of several 'blasts' off in the distance.

It quieted down but then probably less than an minute later I heard a few more.

I was trying to determine what it was. It didn't sound like gunfire. I thought maybe explosives but being Sunday I figured it wasn't the Forest Service working.

It wasn't until later than afternoon we came back to town and learned of what happened.

 

[HPD]

I was here. Church building shook pretty good.

View attachment 2094876

Yeah, I'd imagine Amboy rocked and rolled pretty good. I grew up in western Montana and still lived there at the time. Took the ash exactly 12 hours to get there. We ended with about 1/2 inch. I worked in the woods, and that ash was chainsaw dulling stuff for years.

 

[Mikej]

Yeah, I'd imagine Amboy rocked and rolled pretty good. I grew up in western Montana and still lived there at the time. Took the ash exactly 12 hours to get there. We ended with about 1/2 inch. I worked in the woods, and that ash was chainsaw dulling stuff for years.

At the time I bet the satellite views were something to see.

View: https://youtu.be/mCtmECVnrOM

 

[Cavedweller]

Good post. Thanks for the reminder! 45 years ago today.

I was at a picnic at a park in Moscow, ID. Ash reached there about 3 PM. It became black as midnight in the middle of the afternoon, then flakes started falling from the sky. Nobody knew what was happening. It was really freaky till word started going around about the eruption. Everybody headed home.

All told, Moscow got about 1/4" of very fine ash. That was enough to shut the place down for a couple of weeks till it rained and settled the ash. You couldn't drive because driving would raise a cloud of ash that hung in the air and reduced visibility to zero. The power went down because ash caused transformers to overheat. At first they told everyone to go out and wash down their immediate area, but called that off after a day or 2 because the ash began to clog up the sewer system. It was a real mess for a while.

 

[Mikej]

Good post. Thanks for the reminder! 45 years ago today.

I was at a picnic at a park in Moscow, ID. Ash reached there about 3 PM. It became black as midnight in the middle of the afternoon, then flakes started falling from the sky. Nobody knew what was happening. It was really freaky till word started going around about the eruption. Everybody headed home.

All told, Moscow got about 1/4" of very fine ash. That was enough to shut the place down for a couple of weeks till it rained and settled the ash. You couldn't drive because driving would raise a cloud of ash that hung in the air and reduced visibility to zero. The power went down because ash caused transformers to overheat. At first they told everyone to go out and wash down their immediate area, but called that off after a day or 2 because the ash began to clog up the sewer system. It was a real mess for a while.

View attachment 2094920

The people down wind really got hit quick then? I remember people being told wrap toilet paper around the air filters on their cars if they had to drive. That way they could get out and remove some wraps when the TP got plugged. LOL, that when cars all used the same stye air filters.!

 

[Nutty4Guns]

I was living in The Salt Lake Valley on that day. All over the news, of course. We eventually got ash. Not enough so you'd really notice it, but there was dust dropping that you'd see on the cars. And we would get two sun sets. The first, nromal, yellow to orange color. And then a second that was darker and a deep red color for a few minutes. Weird.

I was in second grade in Kearns, Utah at the time. I remember that my teacher turned on the TV in class so we could watch about the eruption after it happened. I can't remember anything about the odd sunsets though.

 

[Cavedweller]

The people down wind really got hit quick then? I remember people being told wrap toilet paper around the air filters on their cars if they had to drive. That way they could get out and remove some wraps when the TP got plugged. LOL, that when cars all used the same stye air filters.!

I remember they started rigging trucks with big extra air filters on the front grill because the ash was murder on engines if it got sucked in.

 

[hongkong2]

At the time I was living in Toutle on 160 acres bordering Silver Lake with perfect views of the mountain. My girlfriend and I were down in Cali visiting friends when it blew so we immediately packed up and headed back. When we hit PDX I bought a ton of vacuum cleaner bags to put over the air filter intake and changed them out every 30/40 miles to keen the ash out of the engine. Turned off at Spirit Lake Hwy, showed my ID to the Sheriff and was allowed to proceed up to the house. My driveway was about a quarter mile long and when we got out of the car the first thing that hit me was how quite it was, no sound at all, nothing. The house and out buildings were intact except for being covered in ash. There was a ridge in back of the house so we climbed up to get a look and saw that the mud flow came almost to the top pushing a bunch of houses with it, all that we could see were chimneys sticking up through the mud flow. If it weren't for that ridge the house and barn would have been gone.

 

[Mikej]

At the time I was living in Toutle on 160 acres bordering Silver Lake with perfect views of the mountain. My girlfriend and I were down in Cali visiting friends when it blew so we immediately packed up and headed back. When we hit PDX I bought a ton of vacuum cleaner bags to put over the air filter intake and changed them out every 30/40 miles to keen the ash out of the engine. Turned off at Spirit Lake Hwy, showed my ID to the Sheriff and was allowed to proceed up to the house. My driveway was about a quarter mile long and when we got out of the car the first thing that hit me was how quite it was, no sound at all, nothing. The house was out buildings were intact except for being covered in ash. There was a ridge in back of the house so we climbed up to get a look and saw that the mud flow came almost to the top pushing a bunch of houses with it, all that we could see were chimneys sticking up through the mud flow. If it weren't for that ridge the house and barn would have been gone.

OH "HELL"! It seems to mean something more, hearing these stories from the people I feel like I have a connection to.

It's incredible, that after 45 YEARS that the area, and river valley, is STILL a no-mans land. We came here in '83 and I remember seeing the massive, bare, piles of silt, dirt, debris(?), whatever you call it, pilled by the freeway. All covered with trees now.

Toutle · Washington

Washington

www.google.com

 

[NeoBlackdog]

I was in Pendleton on the front steps of Blue Mtn. C.C. when I heard it. Didn't have a clue what the heck it was until later.

 

[Catfishmoon]

Went from sunshine to no longer could see the shoreline

I was near Moses Lake WA. and that's also what occurred there. The ash continued falling from the sky for hours, after 2-3 inches were on the ground you began to wonder how deep it would get...
It's one of those days like 9/11, you remember where you were that day the rest of your life.

 

[thorborg]

I had three inline gas filters I cleaned regularly on my pickup truck plus, for almost a year, had a double layer of panty hose over my air filter which for six months or more, I washed every evening and resprayed with WD 40. The ash would get into everything! Many windshields became dull having ash ground into them by the wipers when it rained.

 

[Catfishmoon]

I was in my early 20's, we also had to take extra precautions to keep the ash from getting into motor engine intakes for the next few months. It was a big concern regarding expensive farming and construction equipment.
A friend of mine tells the story of him and his father commuting home from work on a rural road a week after the eruption. Visibility was so extremely poor due to the ash blowing they could not see the outlines of the road, he jogged in front of the pickup and his father drove right behind him for miles.

 

[Ura-Ki]

We had just moved to Portland a few weeks before, Dad had a friend that owned a glass company and they had just gotten to the house to replace the big picture window in the living room, my brothers and and had just finished breakfast and we're watching T.V. when the first big earth quake hit, at first we didn't know what was happening, but a few min later, we looked out the window and saw the top of the mountain disappear, followed shortly by a massive cloud and then the sound hit us, we knew this was it then, you could hear the roar of it getting louder and the sky getting darker as the ash cloud started spreading to the East, but it also drifted south right toward us, bringing lightning and big clumps of ash, like really wet snow! By noon it was pitch black, all the lights were on, but you couldn't really see much more then maybe the end of the street! We had gone outside to look around and see what there was to see, I still remember the smell of the ash, I cannot describe it other then it kinda smelled like old stacks of old newspapers, mom discovered we were outside and we got into major trouble, we had no idea that breathing that ash was so bad! As my baby brother was still an infant, we had plenty of the old school diapers, so mom wrapped one around our heads and handed us a pair of old school safety goggles, and then let us go back outside! For months after, you didn't dar wash your car, let alone wipe the windows, one wipe and your glass was ruined, and you couldn't drive very far before the air filter got clodded. We had a newer disco van, and dad wrapped two pairs of pantyhose around the air cleaner, you didn't dare unwrap it, you just snapped it a few times and the ash would fall out and you could keep going. What was crazy, we had Dad's 49 Chevy pickup, ol reliable, and it had the oil bath air cleaner, we always saved out the used oil after a change and filled the air cleaner with that, I remember taking it off to clean it out and having a layer of mud almost an inch deep in the bottom of the bowel, but that engine never skipped a beat! Seemed the oil worked better then anything else!
Later, we had YUGE piles of ash, about a week after the first big blast, we had to go up on the roof and sweep it all down, so we swept it to the drive way and then down to the street, there were piles every 50 feet or so, usually 2 to 3 feet high, the city came through with a bucket loader and dump trucks and hauled it off to who knows where, then after, a fire truck came through, opened the hydrant and sprayed up and down the street as far as they could, then a street sweeper can through and sorta collected the rest, or pushed it down the storm drains and then had to clear that out later!
I remember having visible ash around for probably 5 or 6 months after, once the rains came back, things finally started looking normal, but there is still a pretty good layer of ash just below the surface in most areas you check!