May 18, 1980

"f86sabre" (f86sabre) 05/18/2018 at 13:16 • Filed to: None

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Mount St. Helens has its major eruption. This is what happens when a mountain falls apart.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 13:25

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Oh hey nice timing since the PNW oppo meet is happening there tomorrow!

Chariotoflove > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 13:29

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I remember when this happened. It really made you understand what happened to Pompeii.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 13:36

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I went looking for footage of Pinatubo just now, but didn’t happen across any “earth shattering kaboom” dramatic up-close footage. Kind of surprising.

Also ran across this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Lamington

f86sabre > Chariotoflove 05/18/2018 at 13:41

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I saw it from my yard as a kid from about 80 miles north. I still remember it!

WilliamsSW > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 13:56

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Fun fact- I have a cousin who was born that day, 400 miles downwind in Boise. They got a fair amount of ash fall, apparently. And her birthday is really easy to remember.

Chariotoflove > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 13:56

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Oh wow, that must have been something. I was many states away.

user314 > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 14:02

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God, the power on display in that gif.

lone_liberal > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 14:08

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I remember seeing that ash cloud heading our way. Huge black cloud. It was the first time that I had ever heard the Emergency Broadcast Signal that wasn’t a test and it didn’t work at all. The tone would start and then nothing. We were dealing with that ash for a long time after that, especially on my grandfather’s farm.

Here’s a heartbreaking car related photo:

TheRealBicycleBuck > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 14:21

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My great-uncle lives in Olympia. After the eruption, he sent everyone in the family a film tube of the ash. I lost mine when our house burned down. I tried to figure out which was which, but I learned that it’s really hard to distinguish volcano ash from house ash. 

lone_liberal > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 14:54

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You got me going through our newspaper’s slide show and found this. It so perfectly sums up that time. Generic “Beer beer” included.

RPM esq. > lone_liberal 05/18/2018 at 15:27

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It’s hard to tell with the particle mask of course, but this looks suspiciously like my dad circa 1980, and he was in the area....hmmmmm.

RPM esq. > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 15:36

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My mom was a search and rescue dog handler at the time and worked on the searches in the aftermath. In some areas the ground was so hot that they had to wrap the dogs’ feet with socks or bandannas and regularly wet the wrappings to keep their pads from getting burnt. Her helmet still has fine-grained ash in every little abrasion and scratch that never washed off. Hell, her lungs probably do too.

f86sabre > RPM esq. 05/18/2018 at 16:57

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Wow! Thanks to your mom.

wafflesnfalafel > f86sabre 05/18/2018 at 18:38

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It’s still an amazing place - we were up there a couple years ago. This is a huge stump on the back side of Harry’s Ridge - taken clean off along the blast line, Rainier in the background.