05/18/2023
43 years ago today, Mt. St. Helens erupted!
at , May 18, 1980, 7:00 AM: Totally clear, no activity.
USGS scientist Bob Christiansen is in Vancouver (WA). He radios Coldwater II, for the routine morning check on the volcano.
“What’s it like up there, Dave?”
“Very nice, totally clear,” says Johnston. “You can see the mountain entirely.”
David Johnston has been up since 5:50 AM, making three laser measurements to Goat Rocks, tracking the movement of Mount St. Helens’ north flank. He transmits measurements to Vancouver. The bulge is still creeping outward, no appreciable change in rate.
At the Coldwater I observation post, The Columbian newspaper photographer Reid Blackburn snap frames of Mount St. Helens, beautiful in the morning light. He jots in a notebook 7:11 AM, totally clear, no activity. Loggers wake in the Hoffstadt quarry. Frying eggs on a camp stove, they give no thought to Mount St. Helens, hidden behind several ridges, talking instead of finishing the thinning of the last 10 acres. Ten miles southeast on Road 100 above Bear Meadow, Keith Ronnholm awakes and glances out his Toyota pickup—there is no summit steam this morning. Gary Rosenquist has been up all night at the fire, swapping stories with friends. They screw cameras to tripods and frame the volcano against a beautiful blue sky backdrop.
Later, seismologists will scour the seismic records from May 15 to 18 trying to find a scrap of information that could have foretold the event. There is none. The huge seismic buildup in March seemed to be the wad of magma intruding into the volcano. That was the big event. In time, it caused all the others.
