Happy Saint Helens Day!

[seawasp]

May 18th, 1980. 20-- wait. Strike that. THIRTY years ago Mount Saint Helens exploded with the force of hundreds of Hiroshimas, throwing a cubic kilometer of dust and ash into the stratosphere and levelling everything in a 120-degree arc with a lateral blast and pyroclastic cloud that reached as far as 20 kilometers from the volcano. The largest eruption in the contiguous United States, it is merely a reminder that the West Coast of the USA is part of the Ring of Fire. Only a relatively few people died that day; if -- or, rather, when -- other volcanoes, such as Mount Ranier, go, the death toll could be vastly higher.

Mount Saint Helens is also a symbol of the power of life to reclaim devastation. Much of the area which was a dead gray moonscape is now green, young forest and fields, and formerly lifeless Spirit Lake boasts oversized rainbow trout in its waters.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

Um, 30 years.

[seawasp]

Thirty, twenty, what's the difference ?

Are you coming up this month?

[shana.livejournal.com]

Not this month -- Dad's 90th birthday party is the 30th. I could come the first or last weekends of June, or the 4th of July weekend.

[seawasp]

Ah well, so you miss both my signings. Maybe I can do signings or something elsewhere...

[shana.livejournal.com]

You want to come sign at our library book fair this summer? I believe it is the weekend of July 17th.

[seawasp]

If I could work it as something for the whole family it might be possible, but that's probably a bit too far for the commute.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Wow twenty years.

[seawasp]

THIRTY.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

DUDE

Wow - that's just - well that's a long time.

Have a great time at your signing. Do you have anything planned in NC?

[seawasp]

In general I don't go anywhere I can't commute unless someone pays me. If I can figure out a way to take my family on a vacation in NC and do signings or something that might work, but dumping my wife and kids so I can go to a convention in other states... well, let's say I might have to consider new sleeping arrangements afterward.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I know. I won't be travelling anywhere without my other half and still arranging it around the kids. Plus there would have to be major circumstance changes before it's even an option.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

read about Spirit Lake

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/05/dont_interfere_with_extraordin.html

Those rainbow trout werent natural, some sport fishermen snuck them in there to circumvent the rules. This is not a natural event. Spirit Lake is off limits to see how Mother Nature deals with it.

I went to the scout camp at Spirit Lake as a kid, it was beautiful and you could see to the bottom it was so clear.

[seawasp]

Doesn't matter that they're not natural for the purposes I was discussing, though; the point there is that despite the lake being a toxic steaming brew in 1980, it's now so recovered that it supports life at least as well as it did before!

[kengr]

I remember the eruption. Everybody else in the house was up at an SCA event east of Seattle, and more or less due north of St. Helens.

When the news of the eruption reached the event, everyone was offering sympathy to the folks from the Portland area. Because that's where everybody expected the ash to fall.

Lots of folks offered places to stay to the Portland folks. Especially folks from Yakima and the Tri-Cities. Both of which got hit with major ashfalls.

Wish I had clips of the news showing the snowplows fighting to keep roads clear in Yakima.

Oh yeah, took forever for the housemates to get home. A couple bridges on I5 got taken out by the mudflows. So they had to use the two lane highways along the coast. Mega traffic jam.

[alex swavely (from livejournal.com)]

KING-TV in Seattle is doing a retrospective tonight at 7:30. Perhaps clips will be posted online.