Note: Mount St. Helens erupted 45 years ago today. Currently, an underwater volcano is brewing off the coast of Oregon and is expected to erupt this year.

In 1980, I was a forester working for the Idaho Department of Lands in the northern backcountry. On Sunday, May 18th, a few of us were having a barbecue. It was a beautiful, bright day with a clear blue sky. Suddenly, we noticed an ominous black cloud coming over the back of the mountain to our west. It didn’t look natural. The cloud expanded as it moved eastward, soon covering the entire sky, and it became so dark that the streetlights came on. It was early afternoon, and yet it was as dark as midnight. We were terrified.

Then this light gray stuff began falling. It looked like snow, but when some of it landed on the meat we were cooking, we saw that it didn’t melt, it just piled up. We stood around, wide-eyed. We began swapping nervous theories about nukes and apocalyptic storms until someone remembered the news about Mount St. Helens.

Image by Austin Post. Public domain.

A few passing cars began to throw up rooster tails in the dust. It was fluffy, about the consistency of flour. The dust flew up behind the cars as high as the streetlights and remained suspended for minutes at a time. It continued to fall for a few hours, accumulating to a depth of about an inch.

I was driving a VW van at the time. I had to drive about 75 miles the next day, and drove through quite a few clouds of ash. The stuff worked its way into the engine, and over the next few days, I noticed it was burning about a quart of oil every 100 miles or so. As it turns out, pulverized rock is quite abrasive and very destructive to things like piston rings, bearings, and oil seals. I had to have the entire engine rebuilt, as did many, many other people.

We were later told that the ash accumulation where we were working weighed nine tons per acre, and some very old buildings suffered structural damage from the weight. It was extremely difficult to move. Trying to shovel it produced a pile that was quite heavy, and even earth-moving equipment was having trouble with it. Some local lumber mills began filling dump trucks with wood chips and spreading them on the streets. When the ash was mixed with the chips, it made it easier to move.

Working in the woods became torture. Hiking up and down steep slopes through brush is what foresters do out west, and it’s a great cardiovascular exercise as far as it goes. But it was dismal trying to do that while breathing through masks in an ash-filled atmosphere. The stuff got everywhere. It clogged our masks, got inside our clothes, and rubbed our skin raw as we hiked through brush, knocking clouds of dust from the leaves. Wearing contact lenses is not advisable.

Luckily, a few days after the eruption, we had some rain. That knocked the ash off the underbrush and crowns of the trees, and working in the woods soon returned to relative normalcy.

While we struggled with the volcanic ash, some locals saw it as an opportunity. One family made the news when they bought a large number of tiny plastic bags and began selling the ash through the mail. Rumor has it that they were shipping these bags to customers all across the country, and they made a tidy sum!

Years later, we began seeing reports of increased growth in the underbrush in the areas that had been covered with the ash, which was attributed to the ash acting as a fertilizer. Volcanic ash has been shown to contain soil-enriching minerals such as potassium and phosphorus. But what I remember most about May 18, 1980, was the damage and devastation caused by the eruption and disruption to our lives for weeks afterwards.

I occasionally see stories of possible eruptions occurring in the so-called “ring of fire” and the Yellowstone supervolcano. Let’s hope that one stays quiet.