The answer to yesterday's Who Am I was Sojourner Truth. Because I am heading out to a seminar and then spending the night at Mom's there just wasn't time for a Who Am I today.
Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the Mount St. Helens Eruption. Here are some statistics that were in yesterday's USA Today. It was in a sidebar to the following article:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2010-05-16-mtsthelens_N.htm
BY THE NUMBERS:
57: Number of people who died May 18, 1980, after the Mount St. Helens eruption.
600: Number of truckloads of salvaged timber retrieved each day during the summer after the blast.
3: Number of minutes it took for the near-supersonic lateral blast to blow down and scorch 230 square miles of forest.
19: Number of miles from the volcano with widespread destruction from the lateral blast.
80,000: Number of feet the plume of volcanic ash rose into the air.
15: Number of days the volcanic ash cloud took to encircle Earth.
17: Number of episodes from October 1980 to 1986 in which lava eruptions began filling the crater of the mountain to build a lava dome.
91: Surface temperature of Spirit Lake on day of eruption.
4: Number, in billions of feet, of saleable lumber damaged or destroyed in the blast.
200: Number of feet the water level in Spirit Lake rose as a result of landslide debris at the beginning of the eruption.
7,000: Number of deer, elk, bear and other animals that perished in the area most affected by the eruption.
I remember that day and watched from Washington Park in Portland. If memory serves me right it was a Sunday. There had been several small eruptions prior to that date, the first one being in March of that year. Those of us that were living in Portland were more effected by later ash eruptions. There were several of those. The ash was amazing it would cover the city. People wouldn't go out with out masks. I remember one night being out when there was an ash eruption and it took me almost two hours to get home on what was normally a fifteen minute trip. The windshield wipers could only do so much. I had to stop every five minutes and clean off the windows. Fortunately after one year there were no more eruptions. The Mountain now has made an amazing recovery and has served to teach scientists a ton. You can read what has gone on with the mountain during the last thirty years in either the article in the USA Today or the following article:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/05/30_years_after_mount_st_helens.html
Do you remember the eruption? Do remember where you were when the mountain blew its top? What do you think about the amazing recovery made by the Mountain?
4 comments:
I don't remember the eruption day specifically, but I sure remember a trip to Mt. St. Helen's much later. Was it part of our Portland Netstock? What struck me particularly was that along the lines of the blast, all the trees as far as we could see were just lying there on their sides, having been knocked down by the initial eruption. It gave you a visual demo of the extreme power of it. Absolutely mind-boggling!
Like Pat, I didn't remember the date. I was in Juneau AK and we did pay close attention, as the Pacific Northwest was always of interest to us, as "neighbors."
Hi Pat
I think what happened is a lot of you flew to Seattle and rode down her with Mary. On the way down you stopped at Mt. St. Helens.
I had a book somewhere that I bought at the time that had all the stats and how much power it wielded.
Bill
Hi DR
The ash cloud went North to Seattle then started traveling East to Montana and eventually made it completely around the world.
It was amazing, a local news station followed the cloud.
Bill
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