Mt St Helens Eruption - May 18th 1980

On this 45th anniversary of the eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington state, I thought I would share a few pictures that my dad took that day. These are all 35mm slides he took and I scanned in a few years ago. Time had not been kind to most of these shots, so fading, scratching and bubbling of the slides had occurred. Luckily with the help of Lightroom I was able to resurrect some to share here. I hope you enjoy the short tour of the eruption that day.

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I don't have the exact order of these shots but this one is obviously during part of the apex of the eruption.

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These were near the start of the eruption at around 8:32 am Pacific time. I recognize the mountain on the right so I have a little idea where this one was taken from.

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This was from the roof of our house about 30 miles southwest of the mountain.

Yours truly sitting on top of my dad's van taking in the enormity of what is happening.

Another shot of twenty something me watching the carnage. I was also rocking a sweet Fu Manchu mustache at the time. 🤣

Luckily for all of us in the Portland/Vancouver metro area the prevailing winds were blowing east this day and we were spared any ash fallout.

The eastern half of the state was not so lucky as some areas had up to 5 inches of ashfall. Quite the mess.

Life for us that day went on pretty much normal as you can see. Subsequent smaller eruptions in the days, weeks and months afterward would bring us some ash fallout but never with the severity of the initial blast.

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Please feel free to make comments or ask me any questions about this post.

Photos taken by my dad with an unknown camera and some Lightroom post processing by me.
Please visit WorldMapPin to see the locations of some of my other posts.
Thanks for looking and enjoy your day!