Twenty-five years ago today, Mount St. Helens erupted. The explosion killed 57 people, flattened 150,000 acres of forest, and boiled fish in surrounding lakes and rivers. A 5.1 earthquake unleashed the eruption, which in turn unleased avalanches, floods, a 300 mile-per-hour wind, 600-degree (F) temperatures, fires, and showers of ash that accumulated an inch-high 60 miles away. The eruption sent 540 million tons of ash as high as 16 miles into the sky. Eventually, the ash would circle the globe. The peak of St. Helens itself, dubbed Fire Mountain by local Indians, shrank from 9,677 feet to 8,363 feet. A green forest transformed into a lunar landscape. The surface of May 17, 1980 Spirit Lake sits well below the bottom of May 18, 2005 Spirit Lake. Nature is resilient, and within a few years shrubs and wildlife began to return. A logging company, Weyerhaeuser, has reforested nearly half the acreage of downed trees. There have been fish in Spirit Lake for more than a decade. Alas, Mount St. Helens is still active and someday (days? years? centuries? millennia from now?) will wipe it all out again.
Speaking of BOOM! Also on this day back in 1974 India became the 6th nation to explode an atomic bomb.
Speaking of BOOM! Also on May 18, 1974, in the Rajasthan Desert, India becomes the 6th country to successfully explode a nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Also on this date in 1972, Paul Stanley, "The Star Child", formed the music group KISS.
"Alas, Mount St. Helens is still active and someday (days? years? centuries? millennia from now?) will wipe it all out again."
Not if the EPA has anything to say about it.
all that devastation, and in just a few years, nature is reborn.
but if I use a can of Right Guard spray or eat a Big Mac out of a styrofoam container, the world will come to an end.
And I'm sure the Eco-Weirdos will find a way to blame another eruption on the progress of humanity.
Paul: "I'm sure the Eco-Weirdos will find a way to blame another eruption on the progress of humanity."
See it's thoughts like that that will cause Mt. St. Helens to blow up again!! It will surely sense our disunion and punish us.
