The frosty volcanic peaks of the Pacific Northwest stand in a remarkably straight line, rising from the crumpled landscape east of Interstate 5. But one volcano is conspicuously out of place. More than 25 miles to the west of the other explosive peaks, in the southwest corner of Washington State, sits Mount St. Helens.
It’s been 40 years since Mount St. Helens famously roared to life, sending ash and gas 15 miles high, flattening 135 square miles of forest, and killing 57 people in the country’s deadliest eruption. Today, the volcano is still one of the most dangerous in the United States, and the most active of the Cascade Range.
Where all this firepower comes from, however, has been an enduring mystery. The volcano’s defiant position out of line perches it atop a zone of rock too cold to produce the magma necessary to feed its furious blasts.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Mount St. Helens Isn't Where It Should Be
Mount St. Helens, on the 40th anniversary! A high school friend was in Idaho at the time, and was wonderstruck as the Dark Cloud of Mordor swept overhead and turned day into night:
I remember the spring of 1980 well. A friend who was working at the NM Bureau of Mines--as was I--had floated the possibility of going up to Washington to see the eruption since seismic data made it a certainty. We were both planning on leaving our jobs there so it was a viable possibility. But either he or I --can't remember which--pointed out that the Cascades are calc-alkali volcanoes which tend to erupt in a spectacular fashion. We made other plans. I went biking across the British Isles and France while he went mountain climbing in the Rockies. I attribute the fact that I own a bicycle shop in Oklahoma City to our decision to trust science and not become not-long-living spectators of a remarkably catastrophic explosion.
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