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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 18, 2022 18:06:38 GMT
May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens popped its top (well, it actually blew out "sideways," as the gif below shows). Anybody remember that day? I was here in N. Seattle when it happened. I stayed glued to the tube all night. It was unreal!
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Post by Catman on May 18, 2022 18:15:07 GMT
Catman remembers.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2022 18:55:46 GMT
I wasn't alive. My dad said it was snowing ash all the way to where he was in Portland.
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Post by divtal on May 18, 2022 20:02:44 GMT
ZR, I was there. Oh, the memories!
A school friend (Willamette, in Oregon), and her husband had a little cabin near a lake (I think it was called Lake St. Claire), very near Ft. Lewis. I recall going into town called Lacey.
A group of neighborhood cabin-owners had established a "fishing derby" tradition that was held on a Saturday night, in May.
My friends lived in Portland. I flew into PDX, and we drove up to the lake on Friday afternoon. On the way to the lake, we stopped for gas, and I bought a gag T-shirt that read: "I skied Mt. St. Helens." It had little burn-holes in it. I joked to the clerk: "The mountain better blow, this weekend, because I can't keep running up here." Prescience.
The previous year's "fishing derby," netted many dozens of fish. On Saturday night of 1980 ... fewer than 10 were caught. I'll always believe that Mother Nature communicated to the fish, and other wildlife, that something was about to happen.
I would guess the number of families that participated in the "derby," to be 10-12 -- about 35-40 people. NONE of us heard the blast! The "guesstimated," distance from the Mountain, to the lake was about 70-80 miles.
Other school friends of ours said that they felt that something had impacted their houses. One couple lived in Eugene, Or., the other lived very near the Canadian border.
The explanation that I've heard is that the locale of the lake was low, and that the sound waves went over it. Makes sense, but I dunno.
We got the news, when someone from Portland called the cabin to see if everyone was alright.
My friends drove, immediately, back to Portland ... about 10:30 AM. The arrangements had always been that some of their neighbors would drive me to SeaTac, for my flight home ... scheduled for about 6:00 PM. My flight was delayed a bit (not surprising, given air-traffic rearrangements for the day). Because I was going straight down the coast, to SF, and west of the mountain, we could see it, even though the sunlight was waning. Still, it was an astonishing sight.
I walked into my my apartment 4 hours, before my friends arrived home in Portland.
An amazing day, in beautiful Washington's past.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 18, 2022 23:14:40 GMT
divtal, that's an amazing story! Glad you made it through unscathed. I like that T-shirt idea, too. Clever!
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Post by divtal on May 19, 2022 2:06:50 GMT
divtal , that's an amazing story! Glad you made it through unscathed. I like that T-shirt idea, too. Clever! Yep. There wasn't much danger to anyone who was due north of the Mountain. I remember hearing concerns about what the effect of the ash coverage might do to the agriculture in the area. It turned out that Mother Nature "burped up," some of her natural nutrients, and the apple, and potato crops had a great couple of years. Re-cycling!
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Post by Schwarzwald Magnus on May 19, 2022 3:06:57 GMT
"This is it Vancouver!"
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Post by Ass_E9 on May 19, 2022 16:36:53 GMT
What I recall is the local KFC selling the ashes in small side dish containers.
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Post by divtal on May 19, 2022 19:43:02 GMT
 I was working at a radio station with powerful wattage. At night, the signal boomed up into Alaska, and south well into Mexico. For weeks after the eruption, listeners from the northwest were sending "samples" of ash. ( Thank you.) It drove the guys in the mail room crazy. The ash was very fine, but very heavy. Some of it worked its way out of almost all packaging. Our guess was that there were a number of motives for sending it ... from a sincere effort to share the experience ( yeah, right), to severe "impishness." Anyway, for a time the station looked like how I envisioned Yakima might look. Artists took advantage of Mother Nature's largess. A lot of glass jewelry, and other glass items, were crafted from ash. On a subsequent trip to Seattle, I bought a necklace and some earrings, made from Mt. St. Helens' ash. I can't believe that it's been 42 years. |
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 19, 2022 22:59:02 GMT
I was working at a radio station with powerful wattage. At night, the signal boomed up into Alaska, and south well into Mexico. For weeks after the eruption, listeners from the northwest were sending "samples" of ash. ( Thank you.) It drove the guys in the mail room crazy. The ash was very fine, but very heavy. Some of it worked its way out of almost all packaging. Our guess was that there were a number of motives for sending it ... from a sincere effort to share the experience ( yeah, right), to severe "impishness." Anyway, for a time the station looked like how I envisioned Yakima might look. Artists took advantage of Mother Nature's largess. A lot of glass jewelry, and other glass items, were crafted from ash. On a subsequent trip to Seattle, I bought a necklace and some earrings, made from Mt. St. Helens' ash. I can't believe that it's been 42 years. As I recall, that volcanic ash was very fine and made its way into car engines, causing damage. It scuffed the paint and windshield glass, too.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on May 20, 2022 3:32:40 GMT
I remember seeing it in the news.
I made a point of visiting the site when I went to Washington State for the first time, around 1997. It was really impressive, it felt like being in another planet.
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Post by Penn Guinn on May 20, 2022 3:40:41 GMT
Among the souvenir's being made from Mt S H's ash were ...... ash trays ! and vases  |
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Post by Penn Guinn on May 20, 2022 3:43:05 GMT
What I recall is the local KFC selling the ashes in small side dish containers. 
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Post by femalefan on May 20, 2022 5:05:25 GMT
That was a few years before I was born.
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Post by enigma72 on May 22, 2022 20:27:02 GMT
May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens popped its top (well, it actually blew out "sideways," as the gif below shows). Anybody remember that day? I was here in N. Seattle when it happened. I stayed glued to the tube all night. It was unreal!
I remember!! I was teaching in Germany for the DOD. A fellow teacher was from Portland. She was watching the news as much as possible. She called her renters. They told her the house was covered in an inch of ash. She wanted to go home and protect her property, but we talked her out of it. There was nothing anyone could do Seems like yesterday. |
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Post by politicidal on May 23, 2022 23:54:05 GMT
I wonder if Harry R. Truman has any regrets.
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