Pray for the guys around Portland Mt St. Helens area.
Keith Johnson (Air Amigo) just called. Mt St. Helens just blew up!!! Details to follow. HE reports it's much worth than the 1980 explosion.
He's OK, looks like a long night for him.....


Curtis J

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/index.shtml

volcano cam

be careful! make sure you, the family and your Isuzu is out of harms way!

Yeah I was just about to post that one!

Heres another

http://einstein.atmos.colostate.edu/~mcnoldy/msh/

Still looking for confirmation...

No news reports so far...

from what I heard on the news this morning, sounds like this could be a big one. Just in time for it's 25 annivesery from the last big blast.
Hope you guys living up and around the area make out alright.

I don't know what's going on. Haven't heard from Keith again. Our local news is down playing it to just a lot of smoke and dust.
I've got a baby food jar of the ash from the last time. I wouldn't want my Isuzu or lungs trying to digest that stuff.

Just how would you filter off your intake to keep it all out? Just in case the Apocplyse comes my way! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

CJ

Guys. Please.
30 minutes of ash.

I thought you were supposed to be rugged ourdoor survivalists up there?

30 minutes of ash? Try 3 months of Phoenix smog inversion. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hope that was the end of it--I got relatives up there.

It aint much really, just ol' Helen fussin' a bit. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/notooth.gif" alt="" />

Curtis, I think you got my words confused. It's much worse than the 1st one, since it started going again. Not worse than the 1980 one by far. LOL!

Anyhow, the plume reached to 36,000 feet. It started drifting east, and then switched northeast. Mt. St. Helens is in the NW corner of my county, so there were some good views of the plume here. A ash fall advisory was put out until 9pm last night, with the first reports being most of the ash was to land in my county. Ash and Asthmatics don't mix well, so I was looking for a long night.

We lucked out though, as the plume traveled east towards Skamania county, it switched to the NE. The other thing that helped us, a storm was blowing in, so the ash was kept high up for quite awhile.

The seismograph showed that the recently added $$$$$ sensor, that the USGS put on the dome is toast. LOL!

It was just ash and steam, no landslides, or huge earthquakes here. Really cool to look at though. One of the Portland, OR news channels showed some magna near the "fin" in the crater. (Come on you big sissy mother nature, is that all you got?!) <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/evil.gif" alt="" />

Funny, they were just talking about reopening the Coldwater Creek observatory. I'm guessing that will be post-poned. Wherehouser, had also restarted logging in that area too. I would kill to be that close, when it went off.

Hey, we are! Those posts were from folks 1,000's of miles away... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Keith is a lot closer though, and downwind (at least from the prevailing winds), so it's probably a bit more exciting for him.

I was surprised to see this on the news this AM, considering I drove from Portland back to Olympia yesterday afternoon, apparently about an hour prior to this. It was a nice clear day and Mt. St. Helens was easily visible from I-5, it's only about 40 or 50 miles east. Go figure...

I was here during the last eruption too...the most common trick was to add a piece of nylon from a pair of pantyhose as a pre-filter. That and there was a huge run on air cleaner elements at the parts stores. Maybe I better go pick up a few now and beat the rush if it does decide to let go again.

Jay