Or mountain.
31 years ago this morning I was soaking my aching back in a hot tub when suddenly I heard a series of loud concussive booms.
I did not know what was causing the booming. A few minutes later my special needs neighbor waddled over to tell us that Mt. St. Helens had erupted.
I was about 150 miles north of the volcano when it blew up. My mom and dad were over at Ocean Shores, on the Pacific Ocean, digging for razor clams, with thousands of other razor clam diggers, when the mountain blew. Their location during the eruption was much closer to the volcano than mine. All I remember of my mom and dad's experience was the clam diggers were asked to evacuate the beach.
The days and weeks following the eruption were exciting times to be living in the Pacific Northwest. The first eruption blasted a cloud of ash eastward, covering much of Eastern Washington with a foot or so of ash. We were advised to get ash masks in case an eruption blew ash northward. I got an ash mask, but never really needed it. Only one time did a followup eruption blow a very small amount of ash into the Skagit Valley.
It just does not seem possible that it is over 3 decades ago that Mt. St. Helens blew her top. This was before CNN and all the other cable news. The local NBC, CBS and ABC affiliates went live soon after the explosion. There was no FOX then. When the first video of rampaging rivers and the exploding mountain came on the screen it was very shocking. I have no idea if the rest of the country was watching this, live, like they would be if it happened today.
If a Washington volcano erupted today it would quickly be the top trending Twitter topic. All the cable news stations would cover it live. Lots of amateur video would quickly appear.
I think I will go swimming now, totally safe, this morning, from the possibility of hearing the booms of an exploding volcano, while soaking in water, unlike 31 years ago.
No volcanoes to explode in Texas.
But, we do have an awful lot of potential mini-volcanoes in the form of Barnett Shale Natural Gas Wells.
1 comment:
My brother moved to Spokane about 5 years ago. He was doing some work on the house when he had a LOT of gray grit come falling out of eaves and other places. It freaked him out. (You know termintes, and other things fly through your head...) The next time he had a contractor over to do some other work, he asked about it. Found out it was still the ash remenants from the Mt. St. Helen's erruption.
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