Mt. St. Helens erupting?

Anyway, apparently the earthquakes have stopped for now, and the eruption might very well be over for a long time. in which case, what an overhyped geological fart!

MALAISE FOREVAH! VOTE JIMMYKAHTAH!

http://www.vannattabros.com/adospics/cmush.jpg

http://inside.msj.edu/academics/faculty/kritskg/cicada/faq.html#locusts

Are cicadas "locusts"?
Periodical cicadas are often incorrectly called locusts. Locusts are grasshoppers, while cicadas are most closely related to aphids. The term "locust" began to be used to describe cicadas around 1715 in the English colonies, when settlers tried to make sense of the cicada emergences by equating them with the biblical plagues. Because the cicadas appeared in great numbers and were eaten by the Native Americans, just as biblical locusts appeared in great numbers and were eaten by John the Baptist, "locust" seemed a logical name for them.

A noted American species (C. septendecim) is called the seventeen year locust.

I see the face of the robot from that Queen album cover on the left side of the explosion, right above that treetop.

Then don't be a pedant about taxonomically incorrect but common American English names for critters.

a confusion of locusts an cicadas could be bad

So now, they are evacuating the area around the mountain. Looks like another eruption is coming.

I guess the fly was crushed by a gigantic swatter.

Twitter might be terrible, but the (virtual) sight of the (unofficial) twitter avatar of Mt. St. Helens picking fights with other mountains/volcanos/fault lines is making me very happy.

I was aiming north right for your bitch ass https://t.co/1yfTAsL3WL

— Mt. St. Helens (@MtStHelensWA) May 31, 2023

+1 for st. helens volcano shade, all the other cascade range volcanos are lazy imo

if anyone nearby is interested, "fancy a hike?" st. helens is challenging and long but requires no special equipment by early fall and is I think the best hike, of the long tall stupid type, nearby

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fwa8Ey6WwAAc7EM.jpg

yep

one of my best friends was IN A HELICOPTER CHECKING THE MOUNTAIN OUT when this happened. because there had been an initial eruption iirc, so it was a source of local interest.

obviously the 'copter immediately turned tail and ran back to the landing pad, where his mom was anxiously waiting

https://scontent.fslc3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/494696103_650548804477205_2050833525846235526_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=3_-DPM-8lYIQ7kNvwFqRZkG&_nc_oc=Adm55xuhFfOzAX5pqRyNc78ucQNNP-A9WscV9oRAj3fRpsyLrEKsvkXriQfq1bn2v0Q&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fslc3-2.fna&_nc_gid=fdchlAqKJC2W1nZBH_uyrg&oh=00_AfKv9Pc2VN-f3wkbnrigmzo0w67GWt0mZbWAAtcXbohvTg&oe=683050B5

"On May 18, 1980, Richard Lasher shot this epic photo of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Lasher was forced to abandon his Pinto and flee the giant plume of ash on his motorcycle. Lasher survived, his Pinto did not."

truly amazing

More details: https://patrickwitty.substack.com/p/the-eruption-and-the-pinto

It was too late for Lasher to turn around his car, so he jumped on his Yamaha and fled the plume of ash. “By the time he unhooked his dirt bike his Pinto was on fire,” Smith told me.

Wait…huh?

a superheated ash cloud was blasting at him. he was damned lucky to survive.

I'm just not understanding this specific detail... the ash cloud blasted at him quick enough to make it to the front of the Pinto, lit it on fire, and there he was still at the back of the Pinto just barely done unhooking it? And then what he outruns the ash after it was close enough to light the car on fire within that distance?

he was there. I wasn't. If he says the car caught fire moments before he jumped on his bike and took off, that's probably what happened. the local conditions were more than ample to make that believable. his survival under the circumstances was probably a 1 in 100 shot.

I'm guessing that detail was just an exaggeration in the secondhand telling of the story.

Yeah sure I just have questions about the play by play because that particular claim is hard to wrap my head around. When I try to picture it as a scene in a movie that scene feels badly edited or storyboarded.

Right... Yeah none of the quotes in that article came directly from the guy who took the photo.

gotcha, and I meant to "xp" (to Aimless) after that last post BTW. Sorry for the confusion.

And now he is unfindable so no one can even ask him

I suspect the story was more along the lines of when he looked back while riding away, the Pinto was on fire.

i can't see the photo i posted before except via the link, so I'll repost

https://i.imgur.com/hG0Xf3e.png it was taken from Mt Adams, which is 30-35 miles away from Mt St Helens.

I see your original photo... i've noticed lately that sometimes i have to refresh to see some images.

usgs volcanoes is doing a great flashback / oral history type thing. sorry for fb link, i don't know where else they're posting these.

https://www.facebook.com/USGSVolcanoes

Still mad at the old guy who refused to move, and he and all his cats perished.

was his name Harry Truman, and was he played by Art Carnie for a TV movie?

The National Geographic photos made an impression on first grade me.

After Truman's death, his family and friends reflected on his love for the mountain. Actor Art Carney portrayed Truman in the docudrama film St. Helens (1981).

Someone could make a really excellent film about the lead up to this eruption. It’s got everything, even a caravan of protesters who threatened to turn rowdy if they weren’t allowed in to see their cabins close to the mountain (they were allowed in, for one day, the day before the eruption)

I was living in a suburb of Portland then. You could easily see the plume from our front door - about 70 miles away. It rained ash like snow for the next day or so. Probably about a half inch. No school obviously so my brother and I rode our bike around the neighborhood wearing basically N95 masks.

I remember some kid bringing a pill bottle full of St Helens ash to school, and we gazed in wonder at this ash

I remember a thin layer of ash on my car several days after the eruption, and I'm in New Jersey

something about these stories is deeply and uniquely horrifying to me.

#45YearsAgo at #MountStHelens, May 18, 1980, 10:00 AM: Five minutes seemed like five hours.
Roald Reitan and Venus Dergan were camped on the South Fork Toutle River, half a mile above the South Fork bridge, 26 miles west of Mount St. Helens. On Saturday, they had fished Jericho Hole and camped on the north bank 5 feet above the water and about 30 feet back. Roald woke to a high-low siren in the distance and got out of the tent. The gurgling river was turning to rapids with lots of debris.
“Venus,” I called, “get up! Something’s wrong with the river! We should get out of here.”
Suddenly, logs came down fast, followed by a wooden railroad trestle bobbing broadside to the stream. The spreading flood snaps off trees like they were matchsticks for 10 yards each side of the bank. Trees are hit hard, dust shakes off, and they fall. The earth shakes. We grab our gear, scramble up the bank and throw it in the trunk of our car. As the trestle passes, mud rises to the car. We climb onto the trunk and then onto the roof. The mud begins pushing the car slowly along the bank and then into the moving morass. Venus lands in the mud, struggling to stay afloat. Roald straddled a log, right knee pinned and crushed between the logs. The logs jostle and he pulls his leg up, crawling on hands and knees along the log to look for Venus. There she is, in the mud, 15 feet ahead. She keeps going under.
“Hang on!”
Roald grabs her arm and pulls as the logs roll and bounce, the mud making everything slippery. Twice he got her halfway up and twice lost her. Third time, he grabs her arm enough to pull her onto the log. Caked in mud, they ride down the mudflow, jumping from log to log until they reach shore. They’d been in the river five minutes. It seemed like five hours.
Image shows flooding along the Cowlitz River on May 22, 1980.
Extract from In the Path of Destruction, Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens by Richard Waitt.

the great country songwriter Brandy Clark grew up in Morton, Washington north of Mount St. Helens - just on the northern edge of the area where forests were flattened. when i interviewed her several years ago, we talked about this as much as we talked about music. she was 5 (or close to it) when it happened, and said ash falling at their house is, like, her very first memory.

more like alpine dynamic amirite