Where were you when the mountain blew...Mt.St. Helens???

On this day 42 years ago we woke to anywhere from 7 to 10 inches of light grey talcum powder covering everything.
Dead silent, no birds, nothing. No cars, no people, until we walked to the local Safeway to find the shelves were already stripped clean of everything. People running around the store like chickens. And no deliveries to town for the next week, highway closed all directions.

T
 
I was in the Philippines June 1991 for Mount Pinatubo, Subic Bay then Camp Commander in Cebu doing the evac. Pinatubo is estimated to be 8-10 times Mt St Helens,

The eruption ejected about 10 km3 (2.4 cu mi) of material, making it the largest eruption of the 20th century since that of Novarupta in 1912 and some ten times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. To top it off a typhoon struck the island (Luzon), with its center passing about 75 km (47 mi) north of the volcano.

Tom
 
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I was breaking camp at the Sweat Creek campground west of Republic WA.
All the way home it smelled like the battery on my 1978 GL was burning up and out of water.
Got to Spokane Valley about 3:30 and it was getting dark, had to turn on the news to find out what happened.
 
44 years ago.....the black cloud was beginning to cover the sky, west to east. In a couple hours we couldn't see across the street to see the neighbors porch light, the ash was falling so thick.
By mid afternoon the temperature had risen over 20 degrees inside the house and it was pitch black outside and we had no way of knowing if or when it was going to stop.

I was 16 and it was very surreal, parents kept us calm and we went to bed to awake to what looked like a winter wonderland, but with 10 inches of ash, talcum like powder, covering everything.

T
 
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