Mount St. Helens Redux

I wish I'd had The Fire Below Us recorded when I did the Mount St. Helens post last week, because it's led me to some awesome extra stuff.  At the beginning of the program, they play the audio of David Johnston's last transmission.  I'd never actually heard it before.  He sounds excited and rushed, the consummate geologist doing his job in the most intense of circumstances, an instant before his death.

That got me to searching the intertoobz for a recording, which I didn't find.  But I did find this amazing audio of the eruption, recorded by a young man in Newport, Oregon who was wise enough to think that maybe those thuds were worth getting on tape.

Then I stumbled across Alan Levine's post on St. Helens's anniversary, which contains this astounding photo of a pyroclastic flow, which I'll let Alan tell you about:

In graduate school, I ended up studying past volcanic activity. I dont recall a decision to be safe and not follow the live eruptions, it just was the flow of my interest at the time. One project I worked on was studying a later, smaller eruption at Mt St Helens in 1980, on August 7. This one was of interest because Rick Hoblitt, another USGS field observer, had captured a series of photos of the front of a pyroclastic flow as it cascaded down a channel of the volcano, and since his camera had a time stamp, he was able to calculate its velocities by location the front of the flow on a map.

You know what, that takes balls of adamantium right there.  I mean, we're talking about snapping photos of the front of a pyroclastic flow.  Y'know, the stuff that can move at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour and run anywhere from 600-1350 degrees Fahrenheit.  I know that the only reason I'd be snapping such a series of pictures is because I'd be figuring, "I'm dead whether I take cover or not, so why the hell not?  Maybe the film won't melt, and the folks who find my body will have pics that grant me posthumous fame."  It would have nothing to do with being cool under pressure and being a consummate professional and all that, and everything to do with mind-numbing, fatalistic terror.  Only, you'd never catch me snapping a series of shots of a pyroclastic flow in the first place because the closest I ever want to get to an explosively erupting volcano is roughly two to three states away, depending on the size of the state.  So the next time I go drinking, I'm raising one for David, and one for Rick's adamantium balls. 

While we're at it, let's have a cold one for Dave Crockett.  He's the gentleman Cujo mentioned in his comment to that post, who was caught by the eruption and videotaped the ordeal.  Here's the news report, raw footage and all:



Pretty intense stuff.

And with that, I must away to bed, or else I shall faceplant in the fossils.  I leave you with my sincerest wishes that you not get to witness a volcanic eruption quite that up close and personal unless you really really want to, and then I hope you're as fortunate as Dave Crockett.

Happy 30th Anniversary, Mount Saint Helens

Mount St. Helens, pre-1980 eruption

30 years ago today, I was a five year-old child watching as reporters somberly announced that Mount St. Helens had blown herself apart. It looked painful, so I made her a get well card. Kids, eh? She was my introduction to the power of volcanoes. Horrifying and enthralling, really, when you live with a volcano rather like her framed in your back window. She's responsible for both my fear and fascination. And she continues to teach me about the vagaries of plate tectonics, the power of subduction zones to create as they destroy, and that one must seize the opportunity to enjoy what's there today because it might blow the hell up tomorrow.

Mount St. Helens blowing the hell up: less than 30 seconds after the eruption began.

One of the most interesting things about her is that incredible lateral blast that took all the vulcanologists by surprise. In retrospect, it's obvious that enormous bulge in her north flank meant trouble, but at the time, few people realized volcanoes would blow anywhere but up.

Bulge in north face, April 27th, 1980

Note how distorted her profile had become. She'd gone from America's Fuji to something ominous. Less than a month later, that north face came down, and the mountain blew out. These two videos capture the eruption wonderfully.





And here she stands today, a far different mountain than she had been:

Mount St. Helens, May 14th, 2007

The USGS put together a fantastic report on her past, present and future eruptions, should you like to know more about the science behind her. Join me after the jump if you'd like to take a personal journey with me.

Volcano Erupts, Destroys Jindal and Palin

Unfortunately, the bugger blew in the middle of the night, so we'll have to content ourselves with this image from Mt. Redoubt's 1990 eruption, which more accurately reflects its effect on Jindal and Palin's talking points.

I do so hope you lot can watch videos online. This one gets it in one:



Paul Krugman's Parthian shot is a sheer delight:

Volcano monitoring - why would you want to monitor a volcano? 'Cause it might erupt and kill a lot of people.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the 10,000,000,001 reasons why one should never trust Cons to run the government.

Unterseevulkan!

I usually don't filch from PZ (most of you have already dropped by Pharyngula, right? Yes? If not, why not?), but unterseevulkan!


I couldn't decide which picture I liked best, so I'm snagging both. Plenty more where these came from!


I love the locals' reaction:

"This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time," said Keleti Mafi, Tonga's geological service head.

Interesting perspective, that.

This brings back memories of the first submarine volcano I ever got introduced to.

Until I read about Surtsey, I'd never thought of volcanoes as things that could pop up from under the ocean. All I knew about them was that they were big and sometimes erupted, but I'd never thought of them being born - it seemed more like they were always there. Just like islands. At that tender age, I hadn't yet realized that islands and volcanoes both could appear overnight.

But they do, as the good people of Iceland and Tonga can tell you. So can Mexican farmers, for that matter:


Parícutin began as a wee little fissure in a cornfield, noticeable only because when you're plowing a field, you don't expect to get nipped by steam, ash and cinders. Within a few hours, the farmers had a mountain; in a few weeks, the volcano had eaten not only the corn field but a couple of villages for dessert. The photo above is baby's first lava flow, at age five days. Amazing how you can go from corn to cinder cone so quickly, eh? It certainly made me watch the ground beneath my feet a little more closely as a child.

Justlikethat, the world changes. I think that's one of the things I love so much about volcanoes. As long as I'm not standing atop them when dey go boom, I'm thrilled watching them build new lands.

(For those who might be wondering about the title of this post, I don't really know what the Germans call submarine volcanoes. This one just put me in mind of Ray Bradbury's story "Unterseeboot Doktor." And yes, that's what the U in U-boat stands for: unterseeboot. So why not unterseevulkan, eh?)

Sleep, Helen, Sleep

This was the scene 28 years ago today, when Mount St. Helens decided to show Washington State just who's boss.

My initial reaction upon hearing the news that a volcano had exploded within the continental United States was, "No, way!" I was five. For some reason, my five year old brain thought volcanoes happened to other countries.

My second reaction was to draw St. Helens a get well card. Just look at her. Tell me she doesn't look like that hurt like hell.

I've been fascinated by her ever since. I read books, articles, survivors' stories. I discovered that a pyroclastic flow is no picnic. I learned about lateral blasts, which led to a bad moment once at the San Francisco Peaks.

See that big gouge? Yup. The Peaks used to be a peak. Lateral blast, baby, yeah! At one point, Flagstaff, Arizona looked a damned lot like southwestern Washington State circa May 18th, 1980. This could explain why I had a bit of a heart attack when hiking on the Peaks once, and our guide announced "We're standing in the center of a caldera" whilst I was admiring the pretty bowl-shaped valley we'd wandered into.

You never want to hear a guide say "We're standing in the center of a caldera" when you have a volcano phobia.

St. Helens and I got to see each other for the first time last year. If you look closely, you can see she's putting on a tiny little show of steam and ash. Nothing major, just showing off a tad.

It seems she's gone back to sleep, for now. I'm glad she decided to wait until this phobe got to stare into her abyss and overcome fear with fascination.

Happy eruption anniversary, my dear. Sleep tight.