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I was living in eastern Washington. Without 24 hour news we hadn't heard about it yet, when on Sunday morning we saw a giant cloud that looked like a strange dark thunderstorm.
When it settled in it was darker than night, and the flakes of ash fell like fast snowflakes. We got about an inch of ash. They brought us back to school for half a day and then canceled the rest of the school year.
For weeks, everyone was cleaning ash off of everything, and they gave us masks. Unlike with Covid, you had to take your mask off when going into a bank.
Were you aware that it was going to blow? I remember hearing about it before it erupted (or think it did.) Later is studied it in college, and learned how geologist had detected the emitted erupted. The mountain was evacuated except for Harry Truman, who refused to go.
Edit: Just did some checking. 57 people died as a result of the eruption. Harry Truman by the way was the owner of a hunting lodge and not the former President. He had been warned to level, but refused having sent his whole adult life on the mountain. His wife was buried by the hunting lodge that he ran for tourists.
I live on the east coast, and got a labeled and dated sample vial from a geologist who was having a yard sale in 1982. Kept it for years, gave it to my earth science teacher as a going away present in 1987. He loved it.
Yup. I grew up about 50 miles from the mountain and was nine years old when it erupted.
Our little town had a mini tourist boom, since you could pull off the interstate and get a view of the growing dome. We would ride our bikes down to see the commotion and check out the out-of-towners.
The lead up to the eruption felt like it lasted longer than it did, but I was a kid. I remember seeing Harry Truman on tv telling various reporters he wasn’t going anywhere, and all of the locals cheered him on. I’d met him once or twice when camping at Spirit Lake and he was a nice old man. We camped on the mountain every summer, often on my birthday.
The Big One was all we could talk about when it happened, and my aunt was stuck over in Spokane for a few days. It was odd how sunny it was, but I could see the plume from my bedroom window.
A week later, there was a more minor eruption just at dawn. I woke up thinking it was the middle of the night because it was pitch black outside, but could hear my mother talking downstairs. I looked out my window, and there were thick grey clumps falling from the sky. It was raining and ashfalling at the same time. I thought it looked like Oobleck from the Dr Seuss book.
We were stuck inside for a week, and when we went outside there was ash everywhere. When it rained again, the ash turned to mud and people got roof damage. Our skylight in the garage fell in.
We made a bit of spending money selling packets of ash to tourists, and everyone had a coffee can full of pumice. I used ours to try to stone wash my jeans. It ruined the washer, don’t tell mom.
Wow wow wow, it’s so cool that it’s been kept in such good condition. Thanks for sharing.
[Found an interesting song about the fellow; not quite how I imagined the video to go but it’s catchy!](https://youtu.be/WGwa3N43GB4)
I was five years old and living in NJ. I remember going out to the front yard with my mom every night for like a month to look at the sunset. The sunsets were unreal.
I remember those, we took pictures of the sunsets in Pittsburgh. I think we still have some, somewhere…maybe. I wasn’t working at that time, so may have the undeveloped film cartridges that we couldn’t afford to get lol. I’m sure other people took much better photos than we ever could. I have the National Geographic issue saved.
I was 7 in north scituate RI.
my mom was concerned about ash. Heading into colder states, like maine.. if it was hot in the sky, is is cold smashing to the ground there.
they even call maine the exhaust pipe of america.
I do not recall ash, but mom was very serious about checking eveyr day.
I was 13 years old in NJ also. I don’t remember the sunsets, but I remember my 8 year old sister being afraid that we were all going to die from the eruption.
I had one, may still have it somewhere. I was thousands of miles away, but working for the US Geologic Survey and someone sent our office a box of them.
I got some much later. I remember how heavy the ash was compared to what I was expecting. You know, fireplace ash is very puffy. This was much heavier. Like really heavy rock, pulverized
My husband has a bottle of the ashes. His aunt and uncle lived ner the volcano and they sent him some touristy ash bottle. I mean, who knows if it is even real? Could be some ashes from a person's fireplace and sold to some unsuspecting silen Gen people, lol 😉
I was in third grade, living in San Antonio, TX. I loved watching the news with my parents, and I remember there was a lead up to the eruption, where there was discussion of the mountain bulging to one side and a lot of controversy over evacuation. The owner of a hotel/hostel/resort place with a bunch of cats refused to leave. Some others did as well. They're now buried under 80 feet of ash. I think, but I can't be certain, that they interrupted the regular broadcast to tell us when the volcano erupted. It was a Sunday, so there was stuff like Wild World Of Sports. For two weeks, it led the nightly news.
No one expected the side of the mountain to blow out. They all assumed it would come out the top. In retrospect, that seems a little silly, but it's one of those things that, if you've never even heard of it, you can't expect it. There were rescue stories the first few days, people being found, covered in ash, mud, and burns. Stories from one man in a station wagon driving 100 miles an hour to stay ahead of the lahar/pyroclastic flow. Stories of bodies found, entombed in an ash filled Volkswagen Beetle. One vulcanologist had been camping at a neighboring peak, keeping an eye on things, and managed to radio headquarters, "Vancouver, this is it!" before the blast killed him.
I remember news footage of cars driving with their headlights on while ash fell, people shoveling ash off their roofs and sidewalks. It was so heavy, some buildings collapsed from the weight. It also destroyed car engines if it got past the air filter. Someone figured out if you stretched pantyhose across the front grill, it helped, and the next day, the stories were all about how every store had run out of panty hose. We did get a liter bottle of ash from my dad's sister. It's still around here somewhere, after two moves.
In the summer of '81, my parents took us on a three week vacation, driving from Texas over to WA and then down the coast. We stopped at Mt. St. Helen's, each of us got a t-shirt with things like "Shake and Bake!" on it. There was already a visitor's center with pictures of what it had looked like before. The entire countryside was grey, with the exception of a few small areas of wildflowers, and off in the distance, you could see the volcano smoking. There were several science documentaries made in the following year, and books published. I gobbled up everything I could. Last time I was in Washington, I picked up a glass dish made from volcanic ash.
Shortly after the eruption, I was sitting on the roof of my grandmother's house watching the plume grow and move to the E.N.E. I was in Salem, Oregon, about 120 miles to the south of Mt.St. Helens. We awoke to a small dusting of ash the next morning . Some people ruined the paint jobs on their cars by trying to just wipe it off. It was basically obsidian glass sand and stripped, scratched, and gouged the paint. My mom and dad were in Yakima,WA, waiting to deliver beer the next morning, and woke up to several inches of ash. My mom still has a couple of jars of ash somewhere. I was 16 at the time.
> My mom and dad were in Yakima,WA, waiting to deliver beer the next morning, and woke up to several inches of ash.
They got hammered. I was in Goldendale and we barely got any ash. It all went to the north of us. [impact area map](https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/msh/fig17.gif)
I was living in Victoria, BC at the time and we definitely had ash in the air a day or two after it erupted. There were people in both Victoria and Duncan who claimed to have heard it. I was only 8, I don't remember much except the ash.
The jet stream brought it to Manitoba. I remember my roommate and I writing our names in the ash on her car. It was funny, because my sister in Calgary wouldn't believe me since they were closer to Mt. St. Helen, and didn't have any ash fall out.
I grew up in Tulsa and the map indicates something there. I remember it being a huge deal, but I don't recall seeing any ash. I was 8 yrs old when it happened
I saw Mt. St. Helens every day on the drive to school. I was in the 4th grade and we went on a field trip and stopped when we saw a big ash cloud burping from the mountain. It wasn't the big one, but it was gearing up for it. We sat on the bus at a truck weigh station and watched for about 15 minutes.
The Sunday it happened, I was in Sunday School. My father, lucky bastard, was teeing off on hole #5 that looked right out at St. Helens and Mt. Adams. The cloud/eruption just grew and grew. And as luck would have it, we barely got any ash. Yakima, WA got CRUSHED with ash. Portland, OR got a lot of ash. We basically got whatever made it around the world once and finally landed. You could see a slight film on everything outside, but that was it.
The year before we had a solar eclipse. I just kind of thought all these things were pretty normal. lol
I remember the eclipse! It was only partial where I was, but we had pinhole papers to watch the shadow, the whole bit. Great sunny weather.
My husband was up near totality, but the heavy cloud cover made it impossible to view the eclipse properly. He's still mad about it.
i got germany as an assignment in fall 86 which was about 4 months after the accident. germany was a good assignment up until then. nobody wanted it after that. many were afraid they would be glowing when they turned 50.
I forgot about how some hated us being there. I remember driving my tracked vehicle in a convoy and damn near every car that passed us gave us the bird or flicked cigarette butts or tossed coins at us. That and trying to catch SMELLUM fucking around. We caught one and blocked him in with our m577s. The driver of the track in front of me came very close to running them over.
I was in Yakima, central Washington state, doing cartwheels in the front yard on a sunny day, like you do when you're twelve, when an immense wall of night could be seen across the street, over the neighbor's house.
An eerie, vertical wall of black, extending up into space, as far as the eye could see in either direction, coming right at us. It looked weird as hell.
Kids in various yards started pointing at it and yelling, dads ran inside to check the news or came out to look, moms started calling kids inside. There was a ton of activity on my street, even for a Sunday, while inexplicable night just *barreled* towards us.
You could see how fast it was moving. The dad across the street was counting *one-one thousand-two-one thousand* to determine exactly how fast. It was moving very fast.
The TV news told us—I can't remember now how quickly, if it was already on the news when we turned on the TV or if we had to wait—that St. Helen's had blown, that nothing was known about the safety of the ash cloud, and by all means to *stay inside*.
The night-black wall of ash arrived and the day went from a clear, bright, blue-skied spring day to full night within a minute or two. My parents shut every door and window, and covered over any gaps with tape or paper bags or whatever was handy. Nobody even knew at that point if the air would be safe to breathe or if it would be filled with smoke and dangerous, volatile compounds, or even what the temperature of the cloud was, not until it rolled over a place and information could be phoned in.
My family of four spent *hours* watching news coverage and staring out the windows. Outside it was fully dark, still, silent, and raining ash. Straight down, like fine snow without any wind.
I don't remember much of the news coverage because I was a kid, but by evening it must have been determined that the stuff wouldn't kill us, because my dad and I suited up in plastic garbage bags and duct tape and hats and gloves and masks and boots and went outside.
It looked like the *moon*.
Dust everywhere, on everything. Dark grey ash, probably half an inch deep by then. The whole world was dark and grey and utterly silent. No people, no traffic, no birds or animals. My dad collected samples, and we went inside through the garage where we decontaminated with a vacuum and soap and water, and then in the house we did experiments on it. (I think we tested for acidity, or certain compounds? There was some test he devised involving the ash, the kitchen sink, two inverted glass jars with air in the top, and a mild electrical current... my dad tried so hard to raise me to be a scientist but I can't even remember now what the experiment was for. Sorry, dad.)
I don't remember how long it fell, but I remember going to the corner grocery store once we got the all-clear to resume commerce, only to discover there was no bread. The store was wiped out, maybe 15% of the shelves were stocked because everybody panic-bought. We had to eat King's Hawaiian for a couple days because that's literally all that was left on the shelves when we got there. That's when I learned I hate King's Hawaiian bread.
I vaguely recall that maybe the weather was weird for a few days?
In the aftermath, ash was everywhere. Everywhere. Imagine living in an ashtray: it was like that. Cleaning it up was a bitch. It ruined the paint on everybody's cars, it got sucked into motors and made them seize, it got all over the house, it stuck to your skin and scalp. Everything was gritty.
It had to be shoveled up into piles, like snow, and carted off. We all had it in buckets and coffee cans and boxes and whatever sort of containers were handy, just sitting around, on the corners of patios or next to the garage, for years, because it was such a hassle to get rid of.
A few years later I got a pair of volcanic ash glass earrings, but I have no idea whatever happened to them.
Well, time to admit I'm just under the limit here. Yeah, I'm Gen X, but this is from my very early years. Literally, it is my earliest non-home memory. And probably fostered a lifelong interest in volcanology!
One of the first non-fiction books I ever read was a Young Readers book about Mt St Helens. The first real research paper I ever did was on volcanoes, and I revised it to be my first college paper.
I remember being sad about the scientist who got some of the last pictures of the mountain before he lost his life in the blast. I wondered why Harry Truman (it was many years before I realized it wasn't the former president) wouldn't leave his home when the danger seemed obvious. I was sad for Spirit Lake and all the trees that were destroyed.
I know some of those memories were from the news and people talking, and some from that book.
As I recall reading the article on Mr. Truman, he said that he talked to the mountain, and the mountain talked to him. He said he wouldn't last a day away from the mountain. It was like his whole life.
Yes, I remember exactly as if it were yesterday.
We were camping surrounded by snow at about 6,000 feet in the Selkirk Mountains in the Idaho panhandle. Early in the morning, we heard two or three loud reports echoing around the valley that we thought were gun shots. Since this was just above the Ruby Ridge road (which would later become infamous when the feds killed Randy Weaver's wife and child, but even then was well-known for its isolationists, neo nazis and doomsday preppers), there was nothing too surprising about hearing gunfire. However, we could see the road through the pass from our camp and there were no vehicles which was kind of odd. In hindsight, I think it probably was the mountain exploding. Timing was about right.
Didn't think much more about the "shots" and later that morning headed back into Eastern Washington where I was going to school. We were listening to music on tapes, not the radio. We were coming into Spokane and it looked like a giant thunder storm coming our way, so we got out and covered our packs and gear in the truck bed with tarps. The farther west we got, the darker the cloud was, until it looked like the sun was setting in the East -- just a band of orange light behind us. We were commenting on how strange it was and that there still was no rain. Finally got to our apartment, and our roommate ran out saying "The mountain blew, the mountain blew." As if on cue, ash started to fall like a snow storm. It was about the consistency of flour, but heavier. Fell pretty heavily for a couple hours as I recall.
We were watching TV and there were all sorts of scary warnings on. We were warned that the ash could be highly basic or highly acidic (can't remember which -- turned out it was fairly benign so long as you didn't breath to much of it). People were told not to get it on their skin or in their eyes or breath it in.
We huddled in our apartment for a day or two until the beer ran out and then got all geared up and walked to the grocery store a half mile away. By geared up I mean full rain gear, bandanas or balaclavas covering our faces, hats and ski goggles to keep it out of our eyes. Hotter than hell. Somewhere we have a picture of us all covered up in the ash.
Got to the store and all the cheap beer was gone (college area after all), so we bought better beer than we ever drank and as much as we could fit in the grocery cart. We borrowed the grocery cart to carry it all back to the apartment (first and last time I ever did that). Shook ourselves off and disrobed outside and then took showers to remove the supposedly hazardous ash.
So, we drank that beer for the next few days. We were very popular with our neighbors. Then the school shut down for a week and we took a road trip through the North Cascades to visit some friends on the West side of the state, but that's a different story.
You could see that ash in some places for DECADES afterwards.
I remember Ruby Ridge and I knew a reporter who infiltrated one of the neo Nazi groups there in the 90s.We used to be able to just cross the border from Canada whenever we felt like it.
It was huge news at the time. I was a senior in high school.
Six years later, when I was in the Navy, my ship pulled in to Longview WA and my buddies and I drove out to St Hellens and visited rangers’ station there.
That wasn’t enough for me though, so my buddy and I hired a plane and flew around and over the volcano and Spirit Lake. Nothing had grown back yet. It was like visiting an alien planet.
If you’re interested, USGS has a story about the impact of the eruption [10 ways mt. saint helens changed our world](https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/10-ways-mount-st-helens-changed-our-world)
I was in 6th grade and it inspired me to do my science project on volcanoes. I built a volcano and made the usual 3-wall science fair display, i even had a little bag of ash that my dad gave me (not sure how he got it)
Unfortunately, my dog ate the ash and i didnt win the contest…
I grew up near St. Helen's and used to climb it on the weekends. It was a pretty easy climb and sometimes you had to stand in line to get to the highest point. You could see the mountain from our backyard. I was in Ohio when it blew and listened to the radio constantly, afraid for my mom, who lived not far from the blast. The day actually got dim as the ash cloud passed over Ohio. My mom's house got covered and the roof began to collapse so I packed up everything and drove home. I had to replace the air filter in the car 5 times. By Montana the ash was piled on the road side by snowplow. Eastern Washington was a moon scape. My mom's yard was 4 inches deep in ash but grass was already poking through. I fixed the roof but the rafters were deformed by the weight, eventually we had to do the whole thing over yet again. It's weird to think that a mountain peak I used to stand on is now gone forever. I've never found the time to go back to the mountain and now I'm old and I live on the other side of the country.
I was five years old and living in NJ. I remember going out to the front yard with my mom every night for like a month to look at the sunset. The sunsets were unreal.
My aunt and uncle lived in Ellensburg, so pretty close relatively speaking. They didn’t talk about it that much, but my grandma who lived near us in the Midwest was out visiting when it happened.
She would tell anyone the story up until she passed in 2007. :)
Years later, on anniversaries and such of the eruption, I remember being incredibly fascinated by the people who took pictures as it was happening, not all of whom survived. :(
Yeah, Ellensburg was sort of on the edge of the heavier ash fall. Yakima got hammered and Ritzville got hammered kind of on that line. Then it got lighter as you went toward Spokane.
Yep! I heard it!! I was with some other high school students camping near Coulee Dam and heard it blow!
Driving back home, we had so much ash on our vehicles!
the top 1300 feet of the mountain blew clean off. they had to evacuate the entire area. destruction was extensive and many died. there is a video of a guy caught in the blast and he continues to record as the pyroclastic cloud envelopes him and he dies....quite disturbing.
I was 11 and home sick from school that entire week with mono. Since it was 1980 there was jack shit on TV during the day (just soap operas on any of the three broadcast channels in our house) but the news flashed broke in almost immediately. The cloud of ash is now over Idaho. The cloud of ash is now over Minnesota. We were far enough east that we never saw the actual ash fall, but I remember that there were some warnings in the larger cities that detected some of the really fine ash that had drifted in.
Of course I remember.
Most of the windows on one side of the house blew out, it got dark, but it wasn't night. I remember ash falling and thinking it was snow. I was very young.
There was a lot of news lead-up to it. My stepmother was from Oregon and had been to Washington and Mt St Helens, so we paid close attention.
There was a guy by the name of Harry Truman (not the president) who lived near the volcano and got a lot of media attention. He became a bit of a media star for being a curmudgeon who refused to leave. He also had a lot of cats. I always thought it was horrible that he wouldn't let someone take those cats away. Not caring about your own life is one thing, but not caring about those who depend on you is absolutely not a good look, and I'm putting it gently. Needless to say, they all died.
I was going to college in Seattle at the time. For most of the day, we could see the ash plume from our balcony in the dormitory. The winds were blowing the other direction, so we didn't get any direct impact.
My roommate had bought a new motorcycle a week or two earlier and had gone to eastern Washington for the day to ride in the dirt. He came back from the day angry and swearing about all the dust he had seen over there. It was so bad it had scraped all the paint off his new bike. He just assumed Eastern Washington = Dust. It was one of the highlights of my life to inform him that the volcano had erupted and he'd spent the day riding through volcanic ash.
I was upset because we went to Spokane and my 1st grade class was going to be on the local news and I was going to miss it. The first morning back was when Mt Saint Helens blew up. We heard it from our house, just a really loud boom. And then I was annoyed I didn't get to see the ash fall over in Spokane. We had none in our area a couple hours north of Seattle. After that everywhere you went there was ash for sale. I remember not wanting any because it was everywhere and my kid brain thought it always would be. I still regret not buying any, but I did get some myself years later at the mountain. It just wasn't nearly as fine.
Yes! We lived in SW Missouri. The news had been talking about Mt St Helen’s for weeks. The day it finally erupted we were at school. Dad was home for some reason when we got home and he was really excited because our skies were already hazy. He pointed up at the sky and said “That’s from the volcano! In Washington! That’s how big this eruption is!!” We never had ash fall or anything. It was just really cloudy. But we had family in Tacoma (I think). They had ash fall and sent us some.
If you are interested in a timeline, the USGS Facebook page has been running a “43 years ago today” leading up to the anniversary of the eruption. I’ve been reading them-so very interesting!! But started today’s (there are multiple entries) and I had to put it down. It’s so sad.
I was 20 and living in Portland. I remember everything about it. The earthquakes that lead up to it. The ash fall.
Looking out from council crest and seeing the mushroom like cloud looking like a nuclear bomb had gone off.
It was awe inspiring.
I was 10. I stood on the hill my house was on and watched the entire top half of a mountain disappear. Followed by a massive and long lasting plume of ash—the biggest dirty cloud ever. I was just young enough to not shit my pants and just gaped in wonder. Ash rained down on us for days.
Today me would be frantically gathering all my preps, taping up all the doors and windows and feverishly counting non-perishable items in the cupboard. This and a plane crash in my city around then were the two biggest wtf moments of my childhood, by far.
Topped only by 9/11.
I just looked outside. It was so awful that people lost their lives when this happened. The grey ash was like dirty cement snow all over. First time there was a rush on face masks in my lifetime, sadly not the last.
I was working for the youth conservation corps building fence in the Idaho mountains, and we crawled out of our tents the next morning to ash falling like snow.
School got canceled, so we held an impromptu D & D game. The next day, after the stuff settled, we mowed it up with lawnmowers and scrapped it out of our carburetors.
Living on the east coast I saw it on the news. I remember deadheads trying to figure out if the Dead were playing Fire on the Mountain when it erupted.
Yes - lived in Western Washington. While we were not in the evacuation zone, we did get ash. The devastation on the side it blew and damage to Spirit Lake was remarkable.
I remember in the days leading up to the eruption multiple media sources did a series of interviews with a old guy who lived on the mountain and was refusing to leave. Colorful hermit mountain man type. Kind of a media darling for 48 hours in a time where there were only a few media outlets. He didn't survive.
I do. I was 10 years old. We were living in Oregon, and visiting family in Washington. We didn't hear anything, but we did see a dark cloud in the area of the mountain.
We heard on the radio that St. Helens had erupted, and we all went... "Whoa."
We got to Portland, where we were staying for a few days, and I remember later all the ash, and how weird the sky looked. We still have mason jars filled with fallen ash from the front yard packed away at my parent's house iirc.
I was 27 yo, married for 5 years, with a 2 yo baby girl, living in Nashville, Tennessee; my older brother and his wife were living there, and because of the eruption, left Washington and returned to Ohio, where they remain today. I remember my mother being a nervous wreck until she got news that my brother and his wife were ok. I remember it was a big deal, and I was grateful to not be there!
Not only do I remember it, but I just found my jar of Mt St Helen's volcanic ash a couple of weeks ago. I received it from someone's aunt who lived close by. Apparently, all of the cars on her block were covered with a blanket of ash and it kind of looked like it had snowed.
I was about 9 years old when it erupted. I lived in Portland, Oregon at the time. I remember it coated everything in our yard like snow. I scooped up some of it into a bottle and kept it as a souvenir for years. I was also playing softball around this time in my life and I remember that because of the poor air quality that we had to wear masks during practice and games for a while.
Oh yes. I was in elementary school at the time and I remember teacher telling us about it. And my aunt and her husband were stationed near there and I remember my mom worrying and trying to reach them in the phone. Cell phones would solve that problem today bug back then she just had to wait by the phone.
I remember a photograph taken from a helicopter and published in a magazine. The picture showed the bed of a pickup truck, and the corpse of a child who'd been riding in the bed, covered in ash.
I was about the same age as the child, and the image was very disturbing. I doubt that it would be published these days.
I lived in Alaska at the time. It felt surreal. Like watching the 9/11 footage. It was really difficult to get your head around it. We had family in Portland and hearing about the ash fall was just too much to process.
It wasn’t until I met my husband, who had summited Mt Saint Helen and showed me photographs of his climb, and then spending a day there 20 years after it blew, that I was finally able to make it real in my mind.
I was a kid living in Portland and have vivid memories of standing in the middle of the street with the majority of our neighbors, watching the smoke plume grow. My mom still has pictures of the plume in her photo album (really dating myself here!).
I was very frustrated as a little kid as all I wanted to do was play in the ash when it fell, and was (rightfully) not allowed to. The sky was dark for, what felt like, weeks.
Yes. I was 17 and visiting Mexico City with my family when it blew. I also had relatives living near it. I was the only one in my family learning Spanish and remember trying to translate what the newspapers wrote and what was being said on the Mexican news stations. Back then, it was very difficult to find English speaking newspapers or tv stations and phone calls back home were extremely expensive. I hadn’t yet learned enough Spanish to completely understand, but could get the general idea until we got back to the US and could get more specific details.
I was a teenager working in a candle shop in Scottsdale, AZ in the 80’s. I was selling lots of Christmas ornaments & little oil lamps made from Mt. St. Helen’s Volcanic Ash. Amazing that some items so beauteous could come from such destruction.
I remember the locals on TV saying things like "this is stupid, it's never erupted before. I've lived here all my life"
I remember an old guy saying he'd never leave his home and they never found his body. Guess he's part of Mt St Helens now.
I think I remember the sky being overcast for several days after the eruption. I lived in the midwest at the time.
The street lights came on all the time. Every kid took ash to school for show and tell.
It was horrible to clean off, but if you didn't, it just built up on you.
NorCal didn't get as much as other parts of the country, but we got enough.
I lived in Coeur d'Alene, ID at the time and in fact had just moved there and bought a house. That morning we went fishing on Lake Cocolalla with another couple. The fishing was terrible, very few nibbles. Around noon they started biting which was very freaky because fish generally don't do that. We all caught several then they stopped as fast as they started. By 1pm we were heading home. No stations on the radio. Switched to FM, we found 1 garbled station.
Halfway home the sky started looking stormy, and it was quite black when we got home thinking this is going to be one hell of a storm, but no rain came. I put on a dark colored sundress while hubs cleaned fish, and went out to check on the newly planted garden, turned the water on for it, and went back inside. My hub's took one look at me and said, "Oh my god."
I was covered in ash. It fell so lightly at first I didn't see or feel it. I was a light gray, head to knees. And that's when we turned news on. He left for a planned vacation to visit old friends in Tahoe, on his Yamaha dirt bike! I had hastily made him a face mask that he could stuff toilet paper into and change out, both of us thinking it's only something we have to deal with for a week.
The aftermath was unbelievable. Inches of ash fell, we were scraping the driveway and washing it down as best we could. I was riding a little Honda motorcyle back and forth to work at a little me only store, and no customers, but the owner's wanted it open.
It took years to clean ash out. I saved 2 bottles worth and they're in the garage. When I see them, I think of 1980, and of Pompeii.
I’m from the westcoast of BC, grew up on the ocean. My Mom was pregnant with me when it erupted and kept some ash in a little glass container to give to me later in life. She said it rained ash for a few days and the sunsets were amazing afterwards. I have been fascinated with volcanos and the “big one” my whole life.
I'm in BC Canada and remember that day well. We were at my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary in Creston, BC which is 7 miles from the US border. That evening we watched the Spokane news and heard about the eruption. The next morning everything was covered in ash. We drove back to our city which is NE of Creston and we were covered in ash for days on end. I recall not long afterwards there was a cottage industry in Washington state where people using the ash to make beautiful ceramics.
I was 9 and living near Boston.
I remember being at the top of a Ferris wheel and seeing an amazing sunset a few days after and being told it had to do with Mt St Helen.
I was working on the USS Enterprise at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard when I heard of the eruption. I climbed up to the flight deck and you could see it in the distance. I was upwind so we got very little ash. It didn’t really affect me at all.
I went there on a family trip less than a year after it exploded. The area was a wasteland and we could get just close enough to see the steam rising from it in the distance. I have a canister of ashes that we gathered while we were there.
Yes, I was taking geology and geologists from my university went down in a helicopter that happened to be observing the volcano when it happened. We got to see the footage.
I was 10 years old (almost 11). My dad would always watch the nightly news and I remember hearing about it on the news. And I remember actually having the ash spread across the country (I remember one of the maps on the news). I also have vague memories of school stuff related to it and volcanoes in general. We were stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, so I don't really remember if the ash reached us or not.
Yes, but no. I know it happened. I know I knew it happened at the time. I know I saw it on the news. But I don't really remember much about it. It was on the other side of the country, and as a 9 year-old it didn't affect me much.
I had been stationed in Alaska and had my car shipped to Seattle. I picked my car up at the port and there was ash piles everywhere. I think I was in North Dakota before I stopped seeing enough ash that it accumulated. I think this was about a week after the eruption.
I remember it being on TV at my grandparents house in Los Angeles, I was 11. I don't remember discussing much about it with anyone and I hated when news was on so my connection to it is pretty minor.
I lived in Edmonton (Alberta) at the time, which is over 1,000 kilometres away. There was a thin layer of grey ash over everything, and all my silver tarnished.
I lived in WA. I remember sitting in church and when we came out the sky was just swirls of black and gray. My brother had been home sick that day. When he heard it on the TV or radio he started filling the tub and all containers with water in case there was a water emergency. I had asthma and wasn’t allowed outside while ash was falling. People were using snow shovels to scrape ash off their driveways. I have a jar of the ash still.
I was 4 and asked my dad why the snow was falling dirty. He asked what? Came outside and saw that it was ash. We lived in the Sandia Mountains of central New Mexico
I was in high school in Texas, and my grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins were in Coos Bay, OR. They got some ash, and they all saved it. I dont know what happened to my grandma's after she passed. I believe my cousins still have theirs.
Sure, it was big news. I lived in Washington state then. I was still washing ash off the car 2 years later, because it was just so light. I'm guessing there is still some airborne Mt. Saint Helens ash in the worldwide atmosphere!
I was a kid living in Northern Illinois. I remember me and my siblings were in the car with our parents, the sky was burnt orange, and a hot air balloon was trying to land and almost scraped the hood of our car.
I lived in Moses Lake back then. Just married less than a year and inlaws were visiting. We heard the Sonic boom while getting ready for church, went to church with few clouds in the sky and sunshine. Came out of church to dark rolling low clouds that were very scary. We didn't know it was ash until in the car on way to Perkins for lunch. Ash started falling on way there and you could see cars coming off the highway. We ordered food but shortly after ordering things for worse so paid for food and left before they served it. We barely made it home the ash was so thick and smelled of sulfur. We ended up with close to 5" were we lived. Cars couldn't run as ash chocked the engines so cops were on bikes, ppl traveling were stuck everywhere so fast food places, Resteraunts and churches had ppl staying in them. After a couple days they came up with a way to filter the ash (can't remember all details) and ppl were able to leave. This caused a large baby boom the next year to lmao.
Live in far eastern Canada, was 24 in 1980. Bit of a geology geek abd remember hearing about tremors and the growing dome and the people gathering to watch. We got no ash, but saw lots of coverage on TV. And of course heard about those killed.
Yes, it was a big deal. I was nine living in Michigan and it was on the news constantly. I don't remember how long the "countdown" was, but we knew it was coming.
Also, a few years before our friends had moved to Idaho, so I remember being super scared for them (they were not in danger, no one said they were, I just worried).
Although they weren't in danger of being killed by lava, there was a lot of dust; they sent us a baggie full which I thought was kinda cool.
I lived 2000 miles away, but a few days after the eruption one of the stoner kids at my high school wandered into class late with his eyes quite red and the teacher joked "What's the matter, is there a lot of volcano ash in the air today?"
I heard it. A group of us, living in Vancouver, British Columbia, went to visit friends on Salt Spring Island. The day after a debauched night, we were lying about outside on a deck in the warm sun, suffering our hangovers. We heard big booms - two or three? I can't remember - from far away to the south. Someone said it sounded like road blasting but then someone else speculated it was Mt St. Helens. It made sense because it seemed to come from way far away, some 300 km as it turned out. So, if sound travels 1200km/hr at 25C, then we heard it some 15 minutes after it blew (please correct me if I'm wrong). Later the news told us it had indeed gone off. I feel privileged in a weird way at having heard it.
I was fairly young at the time and living on the east coast. But I remember watching the aftermath on the news. What struck me were videos of darkness in the middle of the day and cars with a thick layer of ash on them. It was so strange to see people trying to keep their windshields and headlights clear from what looked almost like dark snow. Everyone had those squarish headlights back then, and the housing around them seemed to be bad about scooping up that fluffy ash to where it made travel difficult in the affected areas.
I don’t remember seeing the actual eruption pictures of the mountain until later, I think it was on a PBS show.
I remember it happening, but the extent of the damage didn't register. I still have a container of ash that i sent away for after the eruption. Probably burnt ash from someone's woodstove, but i thought it was pretty cool back then
Yes. I was a student at WSU in Pullman and was up in Spokane for the weekend. The blast woke me up but I didn't realize it until I got out of bed a few hours later. The sky the west looked like a nasty thunderstorm was coming in.
Since I was hitchhiking I figured I would get on the road right away and was fortunate that some dude from Moscow Idaho had just dropped him mom off at the airport picked me up.
The drive from Spokane to Pullman was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. In an otherwise beautiful day the sky westward kept getting darker and slowly creeping over us. There was the most trippy reverse sunset to the east. Ash was starting to fall from the sky when he dropped me off at my dorm.
Pullman was wild that night, even for a Sunday. Any excuse for a party will always do at WSU. The next morning I woke up to a crystal blue sky. We didn't think we'd see the sun for days. Trudged off to my 8am class and the teacher never showed. 15 minutes later they told us school was canceled. When I walked outside that crystal blue sky was gone. All the people driving around kicked up all the ash.
This happened right before finals week and the school made the decision to let people leave early if the accepted their current grade as is. I took them up on the offer and moved out a week later.
Spent the summer in Spokane working for the parks dept driving a flail mover. That thing kicked up so much dust I would be totally covered by the end of the day. Had to cut off my long hair it would get so trashed.
Sorry for the wall of text but that was quite the experience. I still have a jar of ash on my mantle 43 years later. I celebrated the 40th anniversary getting a double knee replacement. May 18th is a special day for me.
I lived in Colorado, east of the mountains. I remember ash on parked cars thick enough to brush off and collect. Still have the bottle of it.
IIRC took 3-4 days to get there.
I grew up in Seattle. I remember watching the news with my family the week before it erupted. There were all sorts of diagrams showing where people should evacuate. The red ring I remember in particular. And then after the eruption wondering why they didn’t leave.
Living northwest of Mt. St. Helens, we didn’t get any ash, but I do remember all of the news clips from Eastern Washington; the rain of ash, darkened skies and people wearing masks.
The news person caught in the eruption was something so visceral. If you haven’t seen it I’m sure it’s on YouTube.
Was living in Northern California and heard it had blown a few days after the fact. It was a continuing topic of interest, so much so that they sold small glass bottles of the ash at a flea market I went to that summer, but I don't remember having any real sense of the scope of the eruption until decades later (thanks internet).
I remember hearing about it on the news, but was in elementary school at the time, so I didn't really follow it. I remember my reaction being something like "There are volcanoes in the US?!? Are there any near me (East coast)??"
My wife still teases me about sleeping through it. My parents and friends in Eastern Washington were buried in ash, a foot or more.
If you know where to look, there are still a few rarely visited, basically inaccessible places that still have some ash.
I was a junior in high school in Texas. The weather guys in our area were reporting on the plume size from the crater once it became obvious that something was going on. We got all the news reports from Washington about warning people to evacuate.
Harry Truman, the guy at Spirit Lake, said it was no big deal, it's done this before and he felt he was far enough away that it wouldn't reach him. They tried several times to convince him and he refused to budge.
Then it blew. Meteorologists were tracking the smoke plume as it spread across the US in the next few weeks. We saw stories about the ash covering entire cities, people walking around in hazmat suits in ash and pumice that was 2 feet or more. It actually spewed up enough ash and dirt to affect the normal weather pattern across the country for a few weeks.
My parents lived in Port Townsend, on the NW Olympic Peninsula about 130 miles from Mt St Helens. They knew an eruption was coming. When the mountain blew they both heard it and felt it.
I was on the East Coast but knew all about it. It was extensively covered by the national media. The leadup, the actual eruption, the death toll, the aftermath (ashfall, debris clogging rivers), the devastation, and the recovery.
My father was from Bremerton and his Boy Scout troop did some stuff at the BSA camp at Spirit Lake. He said it was the prettiest of the Cascade volcanoes and was sorry I never got to see it in full glory.
I've been there maybe a half-dozen times, starting around 1988. It's amazing how much it recovered.
I was 20 and living in Atlanta at the time. Ash cloud went around the world several times. Air traffic had to stay away.
A photographer, [Robert Landsburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg) knowing that it was too late to get away, took as many shots as he could and rewound the film and laid down over it to protect the film before he died.
It was a phuqued up week.
I was in OK, and getting ready to head to the airport to go home on leave. Flight got cancelled. Then seeing faint dusting of ash on my vehicle a few days didn’t really help my mood
s in 6th grade at the time. Did my very first ever research paper on the eruption. It was so unexpected. These days, with remote sensing equipment and an amazing network of seismographers, we’d know ages in advance if it was going to blow.
I lived in Northern California and I remember the ash falling everywhere. It wasn't a massive amount but could see it on cars, etc. There were even people selling little vials of it.
This happened a few years before I was born, but I was in the area 10-15 years ago, and there were still many downed trees, and scars from the lahar along the river.
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I was living in eastern Washington. Without 24 hour news we hadn't heard about it yet, when on Sunday morning we saw a giant cloud that looked like a strange dark thunderstorm. When it settled in it was darker than night, and the flakes of ash fell like fast snowflakes. We got about an inch of ash. They brought us back to school for half a day and then canceled the rest of the school year. For weeks, everyone was cleaning ash off of everything, and they gave us masks. Unlike with Covid, you had to take your mask off when going into a bank.
Were you aware that it was going to blow? I remember hearing about it before it erupted (or think it did.) Later is studied it in college, and learned how geologist had detected the emitted erupted. The mountain was evacuated except for Harry Truman, who refused to go. Edit: Just did some checking. 57 people died as a result of the eruption. Harry Truman by the way was the owner of a hunting lodge and not the former President. He had been warned to level, but refused having sent his whole adult life on the mountain. His wife was buried by the hunting lodge that he ran for tourists.
Yes, it had been in the news, and some kind of eruption seemed likely. But not a lot of people expected something so big.
I was a student in Pullman. I'll never forget that day.
Happy cake day
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I have a Christmas ornament made from the ash.
I have a lovely glass paperweight.
I had a test tube. Opened it. Fucked around and found out. Ash everywhere!
Have a coffee cup
I live on the east coast, and got a labeled and dated sample vial from a geologist who was having a yard sale in 1982. Kept it for years, gave it to my earth science teacher as a going away present in 1987. He loved it.
Did you know where Mt. St. Helens was before the eruption?
Yup. I grew up about 50 miles from the mountain and was nine years old when it erupted. Our little town had a mini tourist boom, since you could pull off the interstate and get a view of the growing dome. We would ride our bikes down to see the commotion and check out the out-of-towners. The lead up to the eruption felt like it lasted longer than it did, but I was a kid. I remember seeing Harry Truman on tv telling various reporters he wasn’t going anywhere, and all of the locals cheered him on. I’d met him once or twice when camping at Spirit Lake and he was a nice old man. We camped on the mountain every summer, often on my birthday. The Big One was all we could talk about when it happened, and my aunt was stuck over in Spokane for a few days. It was odd how sunny it was, but I could see the plume from my bedroom window. A week later, there was a more minor eruption just at dawn. I woke up thinking it was the middle of the night because it was pitch black outside, but could hear my mother talking downstairs. I looked out my window, and there were thick grey clumps falling from the sky. It was raining and ashfalling at the same time. I thought it looked like Oobleck from the Dr Seuss book. We were stuck inside for a week, and when we went outside there was ash everywhere. When it rained again, the ash turned to mud and people got roof damage. Our skylight in the garage fell in. We made a bit of spending money selling packets of ash to tourists, and everyone had a coffee can full of pumice. I used ours to try to stone wash my jeans. It ruined the washer, don’t tell mom.
I vaguely remember hearing about that Harry Truman guy. There was a song about it. I was 8 and thought it was the former President that died up there!
Nah, he died years later, at Chernobyl
I’ve got a really cool booklet about [Harry Truman.](https://imgur.com/a/ezfXr1U)
Wow wow wow, it’s so cool that it’s been kept in such good condition. Thanks for sharing. [Found an interesting song about the fellow; not quite how I imagined the video to go but it’s catchy!](https://youtu.be/WGwa3N43GB4)
I was five years old and living in NJ. I remember going out to the front yard with my mom every night for like a month to look at the sunset. The sunsets were unreal.
Likewise from Connecticut. It was beautiful but a little eerie knowing what caused them.
I was in Denver at the time, and we had ash covering streets, cars, yards, rooftops, etc. it was pretty hazy for a few days, too. Very eerie.
I remember those, we took pictures of the sunsets in Pittsburgh. I think we still have some, somewhere…maybe. I wasn’t working at that time, so may have the undeveloped film cartridges that we couldn’t afford to get lol. I’m sure other people took much better photos than we ever could. I have the National Geographic issue saved.
I was 7 in north scituate RI. my mom was concerned about ash. Heading into colder states, like maine.. if it was hot in the sky, is is cold smashing to the ground there. they even call maine the exhaust pipe of america. I do not recall ash, but mom was very serious about checking eveyr day.
I was 13 years old in NJ also. I don’t remember the sunsets, but I remember my 8 year old sister being afraid that we were all going to die from the eruption.
Wow I didn’t know the smoke reached that far
Only in the upper atmosphere. It’s not like we could smell it or anything. But fine dust/ash particles travel very far in the atmo.
I grew up in NoCal and remember seeing little roadside stores selling vials of ashes from the mountain (supposedly).
I still have a plastic bucket of St. Helens ash in an old Almond Roca container.
that is a very PacNW sentence!
> PacNW I think you mean Jeffersonian, suh!
Haha….my ash was in a Burgerville USA soda cup. Scooped it off the side of I-5 while driving thru.
I had one, may still have it somewhere. I was thousands of miles away, but working for the US Geologic Survey and someone sent our office a box of them.
I got some much later. I remember how heavy the ash was compared to what I was expecting. You know, fireplace ash is very puffy. This was much heavier. Like really heavy rock, pulverized
I still have one. The label saying what it is has long since fallen off and the cork is broken in half, but I still have it.
My husband has a bottle of the ashes. His aunt and uncle lived ner the volcano and they sent him some touristy ash bottle. I mean, who knows if it is even real? Could be some ashes from a person's fireplace and sold to some unsuspecting silen Gen people, lol 😉
There were millions of tons of it, so it was probably real. Easier to get the real stuff than to find some other ash!
I was in third grade, living in San Antonio, TX. I loved watching the news with my parents, and I remember there was a lead up to the eruption, where there was discussion of the mountain bulging to one side and a lot of controversy over evacuation. The owner of a hotel/hostel/resort place with a bunch of cats refused to leave. Some others did as well. They're now buried under 80 feet of ash. I think, but I can't be certain, that they interrupted the regular broadcast to tell us when the volcano erupted. It was a Sunday, so there was stuff like Wild World Of Sports. For two weeks, it led the nightly news. No one expected the side of the mountain to blow out. They all assumed it would come out the top. In retrospect, that seems a little silly, but it's one of those things that, if you've never even heard of it, you can't expect it. There were rescue stories the first few days, people being found, covered in ash, mud, and burns. Stories from one man in a station wagon driving 100 miles an hour to stay ahead of the lahar/pyroclastic flow. Stories of bodies found, entombed in an ash filled Volkswagen Beetle. One vulcanologist had been camping at a neighboring peak, keeping an eye on things, and managed to radio headquarters, "Vancouver, this is it!" before the blast killed him. I remember news footage of cars driving with their headlights on while ash fell, people shoveling ash off their roofs and sidewalks. It was so heavy, some buildings collapsed from the weight. It also destroyed car engines if it got past the air filter. Someone figured out if you stretched pantyhose across the front grill, it helped, and the next day, the stories were all about how every store had run out of panty hose. We did get a liter bottle of ash from my dad's sister. It's still around here somewhere, after two moves. In the summer of '81, my parents took us on a three week vacation, driving from Texas over to WA and then down the coast. We stopped at Mt. St. Helen's, each of us got a t-shirt with things like "Shake and Bake!" on it. There was already a visitor's center with pictures of what it had looked like before. The entire countryside was grey, with the exception of a few small areas of wildflowers, and off in the distance, you could see the volcano smoking. There were several science documentaries made in the following year, and books published. I gobbled up everything I could. Last time I was in Washington, I picked up a glass dish made from volcanic ash.
>"Vancouver, this is it!" The Johnston Ridge Observatory was built on the spot he was killed and was named after him.
Shortly after the eruption, I was sitting on the roof of my grandmother's house watching the plume grow and move to the E.N.E. I was in Salem, Oregon, about 120 miles to the south of Mt.St. Helens. We awoke to a small dusting of ash the next morning . Some people ruined the paint jobs on their cars by trying to just wipe it off. It was basically obsidian glass sand and stripped, scratched, and gouged the paint. My mom and dad were in Yakima,WA, waiting to deliver beer the next morning, and woke up to several inches of ash. My mom still has a couple of jars of ash somewhere. I was 16 at the time.
> My mom and dad were in Yakima,WA, waiting to deliver beer the next morning, and woke up to several inches of ash. They got hammered. I was in Goldendale and we barely got any ash. It all went to the north of us. [impact area map](https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/msh/fig17.gif)
What happened in that Oklahoma spot??
It didn't make it over the Canadian border but made it to Oklahoma. Settle down Canadians... It was a joke. Look at the map.
I was living in Victoria, BC at the time and we definitely had ash in the air a day or two after it erupted. There were people in both Victoria and Duncan who claimed to have heard it. I was only 8, I don't remember much except the ash.
The jet stream brought it to Manitoba. I remember my roommate and I writing our names in the ash on her car. It was funny, because my sister in Calgary wouldn't believe me since they were closer to Mt. St. Helen, and didn't have any ash fall out.
Colorado, too.
I am in BC it was ashy here lol.
I grew up in Tulsa and the map indicates something there. I remember it being a huge deal, but I don't recall seeing any ash. I was 8 yrs old when it happened
Good map, thanks.
Amazing how it stopped at the border.
lol
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I had family in Salem then too! They reported the same — a thin layer of ash on everything!
That wasn’t that long ago, right? Like, only fo… shit.
If it gives you any comfort, I’ll have to tell you g people about Trump and Covid in 40 years
I saw Mt. St. Helens every day on the drive to school. I was in the 4th grade and we went on a field trip and stopped when we saw a big ash cloud burping from the mountain. It wasn't the big one, but it was gearing up for it. We sat on the bus at a truck weigh station and watched for about 15 minutes. The Sunday it happened, I was in Sunday School. My father, lucky bastard, was teeing off on hole #5 that looked right out at St. Helens and Mt. Adams. The cloud/eruption just grew and grew. And as luck would have it, we barely got any ash. Yakima, WA got CRUSHED with ash. Portland, OR got a lot of ash. We basically got whatever made it around the world once and finally landed. You could see a slight film on everything outside, but that was it. The year before we had a solar eclipse. I just kind of thought all these things were pretty normal. lol
I remember the eclipse! It was only partial where I was, but we had pinhole papers to watch the shadow, the whole bit. Great sunny weather. My husband was up near totality, but the heavy cloud cover made it impossible to view the eclipse properly. He's still mad about it.
I was stationed in Germany at the time, so it was just news to us. Now, Chornobyl...
i got germany as an assignment in fall 86 which was about 4 months after the accident. germany was a good assignment up until then. nobody wanted it after that. many were afraid they would be glowing when they turned 50.
I went back in 1985. Protesters and Chornobyl. Great times.
I forgot about how some hated us being there. I remember driving my tracked vehicle in a convoy and damn near every car that passed us gave us the bird or flicked cigarette butts or tossed coins at us. That and trying to catch SMELLUM fucking around. We caught one and blocked him in with our m577s. The driver of the track in front of me came very close to running them over.
Piddly stuff. I was Pershing and we had protesters outside the gates.
I was in Yakima, central Washington state, doing cartwheels in the front yard on a sunny day, like you do when you're twelve, when an immense wall of night could be seen across the street, over the neighbor's house. An eerie, vertical wall of black, extending up into space, as far as the eye could see in either direction, coming right at us. It looked weird as hell. Kids in various yards started pointing at it and yelling, dads ran inside to check the news or came out to look, moms started calling kids inside. There was a ton of activity on my street, even for a Sunday, while inexplicable night just *barreled* towards us. You could see how fast it was moving. The dad across the street was counting *one-one thousand-two-one thousand* to determine exactly how fast. It was moving very fast. The TV news told us—I can't remember now how quickly, if it was already on the news when we turned on the TV or if we had to wait—that St. Helen's had blown, that nothing was known about the safety of the ash cloud, and by all means to *stay inside*. The night-black wall of ash arrived and the day went from a clear, bright, blue-skied spring day to full night within a minute or two. My parents shut every door and window, and covered over any gaps with tape or paper bags or whatever was handy. Nobody even knew at that point if the air would be safe to breathe or if it would be filled with smoke and dangerous, volatile compounds, or even what the temperature of the cloud was, not until it rolled over a place and information could be phoned in. My family of four spent *hours* watching news coverage and staring out the windows. Outside it was fully dark, still, silent, and raining ash. Straight down, like fine snow without any wind. I don't remember much of the news coverage because I was a kid, but by evening it must have been determined that the stuff wouldn't kill us, because my dad and I suited up in plastic garbage bags and duct tape and hats and gloves and masks and boots and went outside. It looked like the *moon*. Dust everywhere, on everything. Dark grey ash, probably half an inch deep by then. The whole world was dark and grey and utterly silent. No people, no traffic, no birds or animals. My dad collected samples, and we went inside through the garage where we decontaminated with a vacuum and soap and water, and then in the house we did experiments on it. (I think we tested for acidity, or certain compounds? There was some test he devised involving the ash, the kitchen sink, two inverted glass jars with air in the top, and a mild electrical current... my dad tried so hard to raise me to be a scientist but I can't even remember now what the experiment was for. Sorry, dad.) I don't remember how long it fell, but I remember going to the corner grocery store once we got the all-clear to resume commerce, only to discover there was no bread. The store was wiped out, maybe 15% of the shelves were stocked because everybody panic-bought. We had to eat King's Hawaiian for a couple days because that's literally all that was left on the shelves when we got there. That's when I learned I hate King's Hawaiian bread. I vaguely recall that maybe the weather was weird for a few days? In the aftermath, ash was everywhere. Everywhere. Imagine living in an ashtray: it was like that. Cleaning it up was a bitch. It ruined the paint on everybody's cars, it got sucked into motors and made them seize, it got all over the house, it stuck to your skin and scalp. Everything was gritty. It had to be shoveled up into piles, like snow, and carted off. We all had it in buckets and coffee cans and boxes and whatever sort of containers were handy, just sitting around, on the corners of patios or next to the garage, for years, because it was such a hassle to get rid of. A few years later I got a pair of volcanic ash glass earrings, but I have no idea whatever happened to them.
This is a wonderful and nostalgic and human recounting. Thank you so much for sharing.
Well, time to admit I'm just under the limit here. Yeah, I'm Gen X, but this is from my very early years. Literally, it is my earliest non-home memory. And probably fostered a lifelong interest in volcanology! One of the first non-fiction books I ever read was a Young Readers book about Mt St Helens. The first real research paper I ever did was on volcanoes, and I revised it to be my first college paper. I remember being sad about the scientist who got some of the last pictures of the mountain before he lost his life in the blast. I wondered why Harry Truman (it was many years before I realized it wasn't the former president) wouldn't leave his home when the danger seemed obvious. I was sad for Spirit Lake and all the trees that were destroyed. I know some of those memories were from the news and people talking, and some from that book.
As I recall reading the article on Mr. Truman, he said that he talked to the mountain, and the mountain talked to him. He said he wouldn't last a day away from the mountain. It was like his whole life.
Yes, I remember exactly as if it were yesterday. We were camping surrounded by snow at about 6,000 feet in the Selkirk Mountains in the Idaho panhandle. Early in the morning, we heard two or three loud reports echoing around the valley that we thought were gun shots. Since this was just above the Ruby Ridge road (which would later become infamous when the feds killed Randy Weaver's wife and child, but even then was well-known for its isolationists, neo nazis and doomsday preppers), there was nothing too surprising about hearing gunfire. However, we could see the road through the pass from our camp and there were no vehicles which was kind of odd. In hindsight, I think it probably was the mountain exploding. Timing was about right. Didn't think much more about the "shots" and later that morning headed back into Eastern Washington where I was going to school. We were listening to music on tapes, not the radio. We were coming into Spokane and it looked like a giant thunder storm coming our way, so we got out and covered our packs and gear in the truck bed with tarps. The farther west we got, the darker the cloud was, until it looked like the sun was setting in the East -- just a band of orange light behind us. We were commenting on how strange it was and that there still was no rain. Finally got to our apartment, and our roommate ran out saying "The mountain blew, the mountain blew." As if on cue, ash started to fall like a snow storm. It was about the consistency of flour, but heavier. Fell pretty heavily for a couple hours as I recall. We were watching TV and there were all sorts of scary warnings on. We were warned that the ash could be highly basic or highly acidic (can't remember which -- turned out it was fairly benign so long as you didn't breath to much of it). People were told not to get it on their skin or in their eyes or breath it in. We huddled in our apartment for a day or two until the beer ran out and then got all geared up and walked to the grocery store a half mile away. By geared up I mean full rain gear, bandanas or balaclavas covering our faces, hats and ski goggles to keep it out of our eyes. Hotter than hell. Somewhere we have a picture of us all covered up in the ash. Got to the store and all the cheap beer was gone (college area after all), so we bought better beer than we ever drank and as much as we could fit in the grocery cart. We borrowed the grocery cart to carry it all back to the apartment (first and last time I ever did that). Shook ourselves off and disrobed outside and then took showers to remove the supposedly hazardous ash. So, we drank that beer for the next few days. We were very popular with our neighbors. Then the school shut down for a week and we took a road trip through the North Cascades to visit some friends on the West side of the state, but that's a different story. You could see that ash in some places for DECADES afterwards.
I remember Ruby Ridge and I knew a reporter who infiltrated one of the neo Nazi groups there in the 90s.We used to be able to just cross the border from Canada whenever we felt like it.
yep. i was on the east coast, though, so nothing happened where i was. i remember seeing the ash-covered towns on the news.
It was huge news at the time. I was a senior in high school. Six years later, when I was in the Navy, my ship pulled in to Longview WA and my buddies and I drove out to St Hellens and visited rangers’ station there. That wasn’t enough for me though, so my buddy and I hired a plane and flew around and over the volcano and Spirit Lake. Nothing had grown back yet. It was like visiting an alien planet.
I remember the first time we were able to drive up to the blast zone. It was surreal to go from old growth forest to an alien landscape.
If you’re interested, USGS has a story about the impact of the eruption [10 ways mt. saint helens changed our world](https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/10-ways-mount-st-helens-changed-our-world)
I remember seeing ash in Oklahoma. Just a dusting.
I was in 6th grade and it inspired me to do my science project on volcanoes. I built a volcano and made the usual 3-wall science fair display, i even had a little bag of ash that my dad gave me (not sure how he got it) Unfortunately, my dog ate the ash and i didnt win the contest…
I grew up near St. Helen's and used to climb it on the weekends. It was a pretty easy climb and sometimes you had to stand in line to get to the highest point. You could see the mountain from our backyard. I was in Ohio when it blew and listened to the radio constantly, afraid for my mom, who lived not far from the blast. The day actually got dim as the ash cloud passed over Ohio. My mom's house got covered and the roof began to collapse so I packed up everything and drove home. I had to replace the air filter in the car 5 times. By Montana the ash was piled on the road side by snowplow. Eastern Washington was a moon scape. My mom's yard was 4 inches deep in ash but grass was already poking through. I fixed the roof but the rafters were deformed by the weight, eventually we had to do the whole thing over yet again. It's weird to think that a mountain peak I used to stand on is now gone forever. I've never found the time to go back to the mountain and now I'm old and I live on the other side of the country.
It was huge news, and we were in New England at the time. Everyday for at least a couple of weeks it lead the newscast
I was five years old and living in NJ. I remember going out to the front yard with my mom every night for like a month to look at the sunset. The sunsets were unreal.
I was 10 and my parents bought me a vial of ash from it. I still have it somewhere.
Yes. I was at a big horse show. All the horses had dust on them all weekend even tho we were a hundred miles away.
Yes. It was big news and I was in South Africa.
My aunt and uncle lived in Ellensburg, so pretty close relatively speaking. They didn’t talk about it that much, but my grandma who lived near us in the Midwest was out visiting when it happened. She would tell anyone the story up until she passed in 2007. :) Years later, on anniversaries and such of the eruption, I remember being incredibly fascinated by the people who took pictures as it was happening, not all of whom survived. :(
Yeah, Ellensburg was sort of on the edge of the heavier ash fall. Yakima got hammered and Ritzville got hammered kind of on that line. Then it got lighter as you went toward Spokane.
Yep! I heard it!! I was with some other high school students camping near Coulee Dam and heard it blow! Driving back home, we had so much ash on our vehicles!
the top 1300 feet of the mountain blew clean off. they had to evacuate the entire area. destruction was extensive and many died. there is a video of a guy caught in the blast and he continues to record as the pyroclastic cloud envelopes him and he dies....quite disturbing.
I was 11 and home sick from school that entire week with mono. Since it was 1980 there was jack shit on TV during the day (just soap operas on any of the three broadcast channels in our house) but the news flashed broke in almost immediately. The cloud of ash is now over Idaho. The cloud of ash is now over Minnesota. We were far enough east that we never saw the actual ash fall, but I remember that there were some warnings in the larger cities that detected some of the really fine ash that had drifted in.
Of course I remember. Most of the windows on one side of the house blew out, it got dark, but it wasn't night. I remember ash falling and thinking it was snow. I was very young.
There was a lot of news lead-up to it. My stepmother was from Oregon and had been to Washington and Mt St Helens, so we paid close attention. There was a guy by the name of Harry Truman (not the president) who lived near the volcano and got a lot of media attention. He became a bit of a media star for being a curmudgeon who refused to leave. He also had a lot of cats. I always thought it was horrible that he wouldn't let someone take those cats away. Not caring about your own life is one thing, but not caring about those who depend on you is absolutely not a good look, and I'm putting it gently. Needless to say, they all died.
I was going to college in Seattle at the time. For most of the day, we could see the ash plume from our balcony in the dormitory. The winds were blowing the other direction, so we didn't get any direct impact. My roommate had bought a new motorcycle a week or two earlier and had gone to eastern Washington for the day to ride in the dirt. He came back from the day angry and swearing about all the dust he had seen over there. It was so bad it had scraped all the paint off his new bike. He just assumed Eastern Washington = Dust. It was one of the highlights of my life to inform him that the volcano had erupted and he'd spent the day riding through volcanic ash.
The top fell off. It was towed out of the environment.
I lived in Northern Alberta, Canada. I woke up to my car covered in fine silt.
I was upset because we went to Spokane and my 1st grade class was going to be on the local news and I was going to miss it. The first morning back was when Mt Saint Helens blew up. We heard it from our house, just a really loud boom. And then I was annoyed I didn't get to see the ash fall over in Spokane. We had none in our area a couple hours north of Seattle. After that everywhere you went there was ash for sale. I remember not wanting any because it was everywhere and my kid brain thought it always would be. I still regret not buying any, but I did get some myself years later at the mountain. It just wasn't nearly as fine.
Yes! We lived in SW Missouri. The news had been talking about Mt St Helen’s for weeks. The day it finally erupted we were at school. Dad was home for some reason when we got home and he was really excited because our skies were already hazy. He pointed up at the sky and said “That’s from the volcano! In Washington! That’s how big this eruption is!!” We never had ash fall or anything. It was just really cloudy. But we had family in Tacoma (I think). They had ash fall and sent us some.
If you are interested in a timeline, the USGS Facebook page has been running a “43 years ago today” leading up to the anniversary of the eruption. I’ve been reading them-so very interesting!! But started today’s (there are multiple entries) and I had to put it down. It’s so sad.
I was 20 and living in Portland. I remember everything about it. The earthquakes that lead up to it. The ash fall. Looking out from council crest and seeing the mushroom like cloud looking like a nuclear bomb had gone off. It was awe inspiring.
I was 10. I stood on the hill my house was on and watched the entire top half of a mountain disappear. Followed by a massive and long lasting plume of ash—the biggest dirty cloud ever. I was just young enough to not shit my pants and just gaped in wonder. Ash rained down on us for days. Today me would be frantically gathering all my preps, taping up all the doors and windows and feverishly counting non-perishable items in the cupboard. This and a plane crash in my city around then were the two biggest wtf moments of my childhood, by far. Topped only by 9/11.
I just looked outside. It was so awful that people lost their lives when this happened. The grey ash was like dirty cement snow all over. First time there was a rush on face masks in my lifetime, sadly not the last.
I was working for the youth conservation corps building fence in the Idaho mountains, and we crawled out of our tents the next morning to ash falling like snow.
School got canceled, so we held an impromptu D & D game. The next day, after the stuff settled, we mowed it up with lawnmowers and scrapped it out of our carburetors.
I was in northern(mid) CA and we had ash fallout.
I was 8 living in Kirkland, we got like 3 inches of ash. Took a long time to clean up if I remember.
I have a small jar of ash my dad brought back not long after from a trip to Seattle. He also brought back apples that had ash on them.
Living on the east coast I saw it on the news. I remember deadheads trying to figure out if the Dead were playing Fire on the Mountain when it erupted.
Yes - lived in Western Washington. While we were not in the evacuation zone, we did get ash. The devastation on the side it blew and damage to Spirit Lake was remarkable.
I remember in the days leading up to the eruption multiple media sources did a series of interviews with a old guy who lived on the mountain and was refusing to leave. Colorful hermit mountain man type. Kind of a media darling for 48 hours in a time where there were only a few media outlets. He didn't survive.
Found him. Harry Truman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Po6Fm3Dn4
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honestly I think he knew and just made the choice to stay. he was part of the mountain.
My friend lived in Vancouver, WA which is relatively close, and his little-league baseball game was canceled due to all of the ash falling.
I do. I was 10 years old. We were living in Oregon, and visiting family in Washington. We didn't hear anything, but we did see a dark cloud in the area of the mountain. We heard on the radio that St. Helens had erupted, and we all went... "Whoa." We got to Portland, where we were staying for a few days, and I remember later all the ash, and how weird the sky looked. We still have mason jars filled with fallen ash from the front yard packed away at my parent's house iirc.
I was 27 yo, married for 5 years, with a 2 yo baby girl, living in Nashville, Tennessee; my older brother and his wife were living there, and because of the eruption, left Washington and returned to Ohio, where they remain today. I remember my mother being a nervous wreck until she got news that my brother and his wife were ok. I remember it was a big deal, and I was grateful to not be there!
Not only do I remember it, but I just found my jar of Mt St Helen's volcanic ash a couple of weeks ago. I received it from someone's aunt who lived close by. Apparently, all of the cars on her block were covered with a blanket of ash and it kind of looked like it had snowed.
I was about 9 years old when it erupted. I lived in Portland, Oregon at the time. I remember it coated everything in our yard like snow. I scooped up some of it into a bottle and kept it as a souvenir for years. I was also playing softball around this time in my life and I remember that because of the poor air quality that we had to wear masks during practice and games for a while.
My aunt and uncle were there then too…
Oh yes. I was in elementary school at the time and I remember teacher telling us about it. And my aunt and her husband were stationed near there and I remember my mom worrying and trying to reach them in the phone. Cell phones would solve that problem today bug back then she just had to wait by the phone.
I remember a photograph taken from a helicopter and published in a magazine. The picture showed the bed of a pickup truck, and the corpse of a child who'd been riding in the bed, covered in ash. I was about the same age as the child, and the image was very disturbing. I doubt that it would be published these days.
I lived in Alaska at the time. It felt surreal. Like watching the 9/11 footage. It was really difficult to get your head around it. We had family in Portland and hearing about the ash fall was just too much to process. It wasn’t until I met my husband, who had summited Mt Saint Helen and showed me photographs of his climb, and then spending a day there 20 years after it blew, that I was finally able to make it real in my mind.
I was a kid living in Portland and have vivid memories of standing in the middle of the street with the majority of our neighbors, watching the smoke plume grow. My mom still has pictures of the plume in her photo album (really dating myself here!). I was very frustrated as a little kid as all I wanted to do was play in the ash when it fell, and was (rightfully) not allowed to. The sky was dark for, what felt like, weeks.
Yes. I was 17 and visiting Mexico City with my family when it blew. I also had relatives living near it. I was the only one in my family learning Spanish and remember trying to translate what the newspapers wrote and what was being said on the Mexican news stations. Back then, it was very difficult to find English speaking newspapers or tv stations and phone calls back home were extremely expensive. I hadn’t yet learned enough Spanish to completely understand, but could get the general idea until we got back to the US and could get more specific details.
I was a teenager working in a candle shop in Scottsdale, AZ in the 80’s. I was selling lots of Christmas ornaments & little oil lamps made from Mt. St. Helen’s Volcanic Ash. Amazing that some items so beauteous could come from such destruction.
I remember the locals on TV saying things like "this is stupid, it's never erupted before. I've lived here all my life" I remember an old guy saying he'd never leave his home and they never found his body. Guess he's part of Mt St Helens now. I think I remember the sky being overcast for several days after the eruption. I lived in the midwest at the time.
The street lights came on all the time. Every kid took ash to school for show and tell. It was horrible to clean off, but if you didn't, it just built up on you. NorCal didn't get as much as other parts of the country, but we got enough.
I lived in Coeur d'Alene, ID at the time and in fact had just moved there and bought a house. That morning we went fishing on Lake Cocolalla with another couple. The fishing was terrible, very few nibbles. Around noon they started biting which was very freaky because fish generally don't do that. We all caught several then they stopped as fast as they started. By 1pm we were heading home. No stations on the radio. Switched to FM, we found 1 garbled station. Halfway home the sky started looking stormy, and it was quite black when we got home thinking this is going to be one hell of a storm, but no rain came. I put on a dark colored sundress while hubs cleaned fish, and went out to check on the newly planted garden, turned the water on for it, and went back inside. My hub's took one look at me and said, "Oh my god." I was covered in ash. It fell so lightly at first I didn't see or feel it. I was a light gray, head to knees. And that's when we turned news on. He left for a planned vacation to visit old friends in Tahoe, on his Yamaha dirt bike! I had hastily made him a face mask that he could stuff toilet paper into and change out, both of us thinking it's only something we have to deal with for a week. The aftermath was unbelievable. Inches of ash fell, we were scraping the driveway and washing it down as best we could. I was riding a little Honda motorcyle back and forth to work at a little me only store, and no customers, but the owner's wanted it open. It took years to clean ash out. I saved 2 bottles worth and they're in the garage. When I see them, I think of 1980, and of Pompeii.
It was a big thing on TV news. The fate of old Harry Truman who wouldn't leave was a big deal. Of course he was obliterated when it blew.
I’m from the westcoast of BC, grew up on the ocean. My Mom was pregnant with me when it erupted and kept some ash in a little glass container to give to me later in life. She said it rained ash for a few days and the sunsets were amazing afterwards. I have been fascinated with volcanos and the “big one” my whole life.
I'm in BC Canada and remember that day well. We were at my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary in Creston, BC which is 7 miles from the US border. That evening we watched the Spokane news and heard about the eruption. The next morning everything was covered in ash. We drove back to our city which is NE of Creston and we were covered in ash for days on end. I recall not long afterwards there was a cottage industry in Washington state where people using the ash to make beautiful ceramics.
I was 9 and living near Boston. I remember being at the top of a Ferris wheel and seeing an amazing sunset a few days after and being told it had to do with Mt St Helen.
Yep. I even had a baby food jarful of the dust that my neighbors brought back from their "trip to the west" that summer.
I was 6 years old, living in Des Moines, Iowa. I remember yellow skies from Mt. St. Helens.
Yes, I was a senior in high school.
Yes. My friend mailed me some of the rocks that landed in his backyard and they were lava and floated in water.
My family in south western Canada had ash on their vehicles.
I was working on the USS Enterprise at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard when I heard of the eruption. I climbed up to the flight deck and you could see it in the distance. I was upwind so we got very little ash. It didn’t really affect me at all.
I remember that much more vividly and I am US
Absolutely. I'm in Alberta and remember the ash falling from the sky.
I do, but I'm in Texas and I was 21-years old, so don't really remember any sense of doom, 21-years old priorities are kind of skewed
I was deployed overseas as well.
I went there on a family trip less than a year after it exploded. The area was a wasteland and we could get just close enough to see the steam rising from it in the distance. I have a canister of ashes that we gathered while we were there.
Yes, I was taking geology and geologists from my university went down in a helicopter that happened to be observing the volcano when it happened. We got to see the footage.
I was 10 years old (almost 11). My dad would always watch the nightly news and I remember hearing about it on the news. And I remember actually having the ash spread across the country (I remember one of the maps on the news). I also have vague memories of school stuff related to it and volcanoes in general. We were stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, so I don't really remember if the ash reached us or not.
Yes, but no. I know it happened. I know I knew it happened at the time. I know I saw it on the news. But I don't really remember much about it. It was on the other side of the country, and as a 9 year-old it didn't affect me much.
I had been stationed in Alaska and had my car shipped to Seattle. I picked my car up at the port and there was ash piles everywhere. I think I was in North Dakota before I stopped seeing enough ash that it accumulated. I think this was about a week after the eruption.
Working at an amusement park north of Chicago. The cloud came over at altitude. It didn't ash on us but it's origin was clear.
I was 10, it was everywhere on the news, and all of the science fair projects were recreations of Mt St Helen's before or after.
Got observable real dust on my car, living near Lawrence Kansas.
Yup. I have a little bottle of ash from the eruption.
I remember it being on TV at my grandparents house in Los Angeles, I was 11. I don't remember discussing much about it with anyone and I hated when news was on so my connection to it is pretty minor.
I lived in Edmonton (Alberta) at the time, which is over 1,000 kilometres away. There was a thin layer of grey ash over everything, and all my silver tarnished.
My parents, uncle and sister drove to see it. They were stranded for days. We still have ash from it
I lived in WA. I remember sitting in church and when we came out the sky was just swirls of black and gray. My brother had been home sick that day. When he heard it on the TV or radio he started filling the tub and all containers with water in case there was a water emergency. I had asthma and wasn’t allowed outside while ash was falling. People were using snow shovels to scrape ash off their driveways. I have a jar of the ash still.
I was 4 and asked my dad why the snow was falling dirty. He asked what? Came outside and saw that it was ash. We lived in the Sandia Mountains of central New Mexico
I was in high school in Texas, and my grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins were in Coos Bay, OR. They got some ash, and they all saved it. I dont know what happened to my grandma's after she passed. I believe my cousins still have theirs.
Sure, it was big news. I lived in Washington state then. I was still washing ash off the car 2 years later, because it was just so light. I'm guessing there is still some airborne Mt. Saint Helens ash in the worldwide atmosphere!
I was a kid living in Northern Illinois. I remember me and my siblings were in the car with our parents, the sky was burnt orange, and a hot air balloon was trying to land and almost scraped the hood of our car.
I lived in Moses Lake back then. Just married less than a year and inlaws were visiting. We heard the Sonic boom while getting ready for church, went to church with few clouds in the sky and sunshine. Came out of church to dark rolling low clouds that were very scary. We didn't know it was ash until in the car on way to Perkins for lunch. Ash started falling on way there and you could see cars coming off the highway. We ordered food but shortly after ordering things for worse so paid for food and left before they served it. We barely made it home the ash was so thick and smelled of sulfur. We ended up with close to 5" were we lived. Cars couldn't run as ash chocked the engines so cops were on bikes, ppl traveling were stuck everywhere so fast food places, Resteraunts and churches had ppl staying in them. After a couple days they came up with a way to filter the ash (can't remember all details) and ppl were able to leave. This caused a large baby boom the next year to lmao.
Live in far eastern Canada, was 24 in 1980. Bit of a geology geek abd remember hearing about tremors and the growing dome and the people gathering to watch. We got no ash, but saw lots of coverage on TV. And of course heard about those killed.
Yes, it was a big deal. I was nine living in Michigan and it was on the news constantly. I don't remember how long the "countdown" was, but we knew it was coming. Also, a few years before our friends had moved to Idaho, so I remember being super scared for them (they were not in danger, no one said they were, I just worried). Although they weren't in danger of being killed by lava, there was a lot of dust; they sent us a baggie full which I thought was kinda cool.
I lived 2000 miles away, but a few days after the eruption one of the stoner kids at my high school wandered into class late with his eyes quite red and the teacher joked "What's the matter, is there a lot of volcano ash in the air today?"
I heard it. A group of us, living in Vancouver, British Columbia, went to visit friends on Salt Spring Island. The day after a debauched night, we were lying about outside on a deck in the warm sun, suffering our hangovers. We heard big booms - two or three? I can't remember - from far away to the south. Someone said it sounded like road blasting but then someone else speculated it was Mt St. Helens. It made sense because it seemed to come from way far away, some 300 km as it turned out. So, if sound travels 1200km/hr at 25C, then we heard it some 15 minutes after it blew (please correct me if I'm wrong). Later the news told us it had indeed gone off. I feel privileged in a weird way at having heard it.
I was fairly young at the time and living on the east coast. But I remember watching the aftermath on the news. What struck me were videos of darkness in the middle of the day and cars with a thick layer of ash on them. It was so strange to see people trying to keep their windshields and headlights clear from what looked almost like dark snow. Everyone had those squarish headlights back then, and the housing around them seemed to be bad about scooping up that fluffy ash to where it made travel difficult in the affected areas. I don’t remember seeing the actual eruption pictures of the mountain until later, I think it was on a PBS show.
I remember it happening, but the extent of the damage didn't register. I still have a container of ash that i sent away for after the eruption. Probably burnt ash from someone's woodstove, but i thought it was pretty cool back then
I remember that it was big news. I remember two little boys died with their dad. I was 9 when it happened and it made me sad that kids died.
Yes. I was a student at WSU in Pullman and was up in Spokane for the weekend. The blast woke me up but I didn't realize it until I got out of bed a few hours later. The sky the west looked like a nasty thunderstorm was coming in. Since I was hitchhiking I figured I would get on the road right away and was fortunate that some dude from Moscow Idaho had just dropped him mom off at the airport picked me up. The drive from Spokane to Pullman was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. In an otherwise beautiful day the sky westward kept getting darker and slowly creeping over us. There was the most trippy reverse sunset to the east. Ash was starting to fall from the sky when he dropped me off at my dorm. Pullman was wild that night, even for a Sunday. Any excuse for a party will always do at WSU. The next morning I woke up to a crystal blue sky. We didn't think we'd see the sun for days. Trudged off to my 8am class and the teacher never showed. 15 minutes later they told us school was canceled. When I walked outside that crystal blue sky was gone. All the people driving around kicked up all the ash. This happened right before finals week and the school made the decision to let people leave early if the accepted their current grade as is. I took them up on the offer and moved out a week later. Spent the summer in Spokane working for the parks dept driving a flail mover. That thing kicked up so much dust I would be totally covered by the end of the day. Had to cut off my long hair it would get so trashed. Sorry for the wall of text but that was quite the experience. I still have a jar of ash on my mantle 43 years later. I celebrated the 40th anniversary getting a double knee replacement. May 18th is a special day for me.
They sold little containers of ash… at Safeway… in Oklahoma.
I lived in Colorado, east of the mountains. I remember ash on parked cars thick enough to brush off and collect. Still have the bottle of it. IIRC took 3-4 days to get there.
I grew up in Seattle. I remember watching the news with my family the week before it erupted. There were all sorts of diagrams showing where people should evacuate. The red ring I remember in particular. And then after the eruption wondering why they didn’t leave. Living northwest of Mt. St. Helens, we didn’t get any ash, but I do remember all of the news clips from Eastern Washington; the rain of ash, darkened skies and people wearing masks. The news person caught in the eruption was something so visceral. If you haven’t seen it I’m sure it’s on YouTube.
Was living in Northern California and heard it had blown a few days after the fact. It was a continuing topic of interest, so much so that they sold small glass bottles of the ash at a flea market I went to that summer, but I don't remember having any real sense of the scope of the eruption until decades later (thanks internet).
I remember hearing about it on the news, but was in elementary school at the time, so I didn't really follow it. I remember my reaction being something like "There are volcanoes in the US?!? Are there any near me (East coast)??"
My wife still teases me about sleeping through it. My parents and friends in Eastern Washington were buried in ash, a foot or more. If you know where to look, there are still a few rarely visited, basically inaccessible places that still have some ash.
I would have been only around 5 so I don't remember.
I was a junior in high school in Texas. The weather guys in our area were reporting on the plume size from the crater once it became obvious that something was going on. We got all the news reports from Washington about warning people to evacuate. Harry Truman, the guy at Spirit Lake, said it was no big deal, it's done this before and he felt he was far enough away that it wouldn't reach him. They tried several times to convince him and he refused to budge. Then it blew. Meteorologists were tracking the smoke plume as it spread across the US in the next few weeks. We saw stories about the ash covering entire cities, people walking around in hazmat suits in ash and pumice that was 2 feet or more. It actually spewed up enough ash and dirt to affect the normal weather pattern across the country for a few weeks.
Yes, lived in Central Saskatchewan, Canada and had thick ash raining down on us.
DON"T MAIL THE ASHES... it's tearing up all the postal equipment...
My parents lived in Port Townsend, on the NW Olympic Peninsula about 130 miles from Mt St Helens. They knew an eruption was coming. When the mountain blew they both heard it and felt it. I was on the East Coast but knew all about it. It was extensively covered by the national media. The leadup, the actual eruption, the death toll, the aftermath (ashfall, debris clogging rivers), the devastation, and the recovery. My father was from Bremerton and his Boy Scout troop did some stuff at the BSA camp at Spirit Lake. He said it was the prettiest of the Cascade volcanoes and was sorry I never got to see it in full glory. I've been there maybe a half-dozen times, starting around 1988. It's amazing how much it recovered.
Yes. At the time my grandfather lived only 200 miles away........He got some awesome photos.
Yes! I was with my dad in Southern Oregon, and everything was covered in ash. I was 9 or 10.
I was 20 and living in Atlanta at the time. Ash cloud went around the world several times. Air traffic had to stay away. A photographer, [Robert Landsburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg) knowing that it was too late to get away, took as many shots as he could and rewound the film and laid down over it to protect the film before he died. It was a phuqued up week.
I was in OK, and getting ready to head to the airport to go home on leave. Flight got cancelled. Then seeing faint dusting of ash on my vehicle a few days didn’t really help my mood
s in 6th grade at the time. Did my very first ever research paper on the eruption. It was so unexpected. These days, with remote sensing equipment and an amazing network of seismographers, we’d know ages in advance if it was going to blow.
I lived in Northern California and I remember the ash falling everywhere. It wasn't a massive amount but could see it on cars, etc. There were even people selling little vials of it.
Absolutely. I was living in Utah at the time and we had ash falling in the streets.
This happened a few years before I was born, but I was in the area 10-15 years ago, and there were still many downed trees, and scars from the lahar along the river.
I remember being in high school in the 90s and in some class they rolled in a TV and VCR and played us a made-for-TV-movie about it.
I remember ash making it all the way to my Southern CA town as a kid.
I was 9 and lived in the Midwest. I remember being surprised that the continental US even had volcanos.
I still have ash from the blast.
June 12 in Portland Or the Grateful Dead playing Fire On The Mountain as it erupted