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Mt St Helens

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sfpcc
Posts: 700
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 3:05 pm

Mt St Helens

Post by sfpcc » Mon May 18, 2020 2:53 am

Today is the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt Saint Helens. Does anyone out there have any memories of the coverage of the event, (or maybe even the event itself. I remember a kid at camp showing a small vial of ash from the mountain his brother sent , (I wonder if he still has it?)



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Lester The Nightfly
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Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2005 6:19 pm

Re: Mt St Helens

Post by Lester The Nightfly » Mon May 18, 2020 7:55 pm

I was camping with a friend near the John Day river in Oregon about 75 miles as the crow flies from Mt. St. Helens. I distinctly remember being woken up by some sort of, not so much loud, but primal sound. The first thing I noticed was the wildlife was going crazy. We didn't think too much about it and after we decamped we stopped by my friends parents house to raid the refrigerator. Turned on the TV and learned that she had in fact blown.

We drove on into Portland through the Columbia Gorge and watched the eruption a good part of the way. After cleaning up I went over to a friends house where a bunch of us gathered to finish off the remainder of a keg of beer tapped the night before. Pretty much just spent the afternoon sitting on a couch on his front porch drinking beer and watching the volcano erupt and boil away. A couple of folks had to leave to go see the Grateful Dead who were playing that night at the Memorial Coliseum and they later told me the band had either opened or closed the show with "Fire On The Mountain".

For weeks and weeks afterward the ash was in every imaginable surface, nook and cranny. About the texture of talc, it was everywhere. You had to be careful how you cleaned it because it was so abrasive and if you got it wet it turned into rubbing compound. A lot of car finishes were never the same afterward.

Just last year I went up to the Johnston Observatory to get a closer look at the site. It's a really nice facility they built and named in honor of the man who first issued the alert that it had erupted, and paid for it with his life. Because mountains get foggy, it's sometimes hit or miss if you can see the crater even through it's relatively close to the observatory. Looking forward to getting back up there when the weather is better. Fog or not, there's no mistaking the terrain has changed. Still some evidence of downed trees, but the oddest thing is groves of trees planted soon afterward, all genetically identical, all the same color and height in neat rows all up the sides of nearby hills. Looks like a landscape from an early video game where there's no randomness programmed into the forest.



organman95
Posts: 583
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:49 pm

Re: Mt St Helens

Post by organman95 » Thu May 21, 2020 10:09 am

My dad said with as much as the ash blocked out the sun and mixed into the jet stream, caused lower temps and it snowed in June and July in Northern Michigan.



matt1
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Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2016 12:53 pm

Re: Mt St Helens

Post by matt1 » Sun May 24, 2020 12:58 am

The late Art Carney starred in the 1981 movie called "St. Helens" (Rated "PG") BUT did NOT do well at the box office.



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