42 years ago: Mount St. Helens woke up and blew her top

There's a good chance you remember where you were on May 18, 1980 at 8:32 a.m.

Following two months of earthquakes and seismic activity, Mount St. Helens blew her top. Ash shot up 80,000 feet into the air. Lava and blasted rock destroyed just about everything within a 19-mile radius.

By the time the eruption ended, 57 people were killed and $1 billion in damage was done to the landscape and infrastructure around the volcano.

Before the blast, Mount St. Helens was the fifth highest peak in Washington state. After blowing her top, her status dropped to 30th highest peak.

The eruption began with an earthquake under the mountain. That caused a landslide, which sent rock, snow and ice plowing down the volcano at speeds topping 200 mph. Forests were mowed down. An avalanche piled up as deep a 600 feet in some areas.

Meanwhile, hot ash shot up into the sky, reaching 15 miles above the peak of Mount St. Helens in 15 minutes. Up to 10 inches of ash fell in nearby areas, but a half-inch was recorded in areas over 300 miles away. Flecks of ash reached areas like Minnesota and New Mexico, and continued to circle the globe for two weeks.

Hot ash was recorded by infrared weather satellites as it reached the upper levels of the troposphere and moved eastward.

Layered lava flows poured out for several minutes. Earthquakes and smaller eruptions continued for days. Rescue operations were dangerous. Houses and bridges were destroyed, along with 185 miles of highway.

Though devastating, the eruption of 1980 was not the first, and it wasn't completely unforeseen. Records suggest an eruption occurred at Mount St. Helens around the year 1800. Then, in 1968, scientists warned Mount St. Helens could erupt again at any moment. They continued to monitor the volcano for 12 more years.

On March 27, 1980, a small crater opened following an explosion of steam. Rising magma created a bulge on St. Helens' side. Eventually, that bulge stuck out more than 300 feet. The earthquake on May 18 triggered its explosion.

Today, Mount St. Helens is the only volcano in Washington that has what experts describe as a "sufficient" amount of monitoring equipment. Twenty-five monitors and 20 GPS stations are working within 12 miles of the volcano, in addition to webcams and other instruments able to detect sound waves or monitor gas.

It was also listed as one of the 18 most threatening volcanoes in the country by the U.S. Geological Survey in its annual volcano threat assessment most recently updated in 2018. Three others are also located in Washington state: Mount Baker, Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak.

The impact of the Mount St. Helens eruption 42 years ago was still visible in the surrounding areas. Signs of life returning are present, but landscapes near the volcano remain barren. To see photos of the eruption and aftermath, click through the slideshow above.

It was in the P-I

On March 21, 1980, tucked into the eighth page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was a brief, three-paragraph report about an earthquake that rippled through the Mount St. Helens area. The brief didn't even have an author's name, it felt like such an insignificant occurrence, even though the quake registered at 4.1 on the Richter Scale.

No damage or injuries were caused by the earthquake, a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey told the P-I in 1980. He even added that earthquakes shook the isolated areas in that region quite often.

Four days later, headlines regarding earthquakes near Mount St. Helens appeared in larger font -- and started migrating to the front page.

"Quakes May Herald St. Helens Eruption," read a headline below the fold on the March 25, 1980 edition of the P-I. The next day, news from Mount St. Helens crawled up the page as a headline said, "Evacuation of Mount St. Helens Advised," as more earthquakes started to shake the region.

The first few paragraphs of the latter story read:

"Residents at the foot of Mount St. Helens were advised to evacuate last night as seismograph machines measuring earthquakes continued beating a lively tattoo.

"They're (earthquakes are) happening so fast that we can't even count them," Dave Endicott, University of Washington spokesman for seismographic equipment recordings said.

"The machines physically can't even keep track of the quakes. They're overlapping.

'Between 1 and 3 p.m. yesterday there were a dozen quakes of 3.0 or higher (on the Richter scale), ranging up to about 4.5 ... There were a lot of others at less than 3.0, some so slight you couldn't have felt them.'"

Stories of seismic activity at and near the stratovolcano continued throughout the next few months, including a March 27 story of residents fleeing the area after a steam explosion ripped part of the mountain off. Two headlines on the March 28 edition of the P-I read: "Explosion Could Come 'in Minutes,'" and "If St. Helens Really Clears Its Throat, Watch Out ..."

In April, front-page stories subsided as the mountain's belching contained no ash, only steam, and soon only experts kept their eyes on St. Helens.

Then, a week into May, the mountain's activity started raising alarms again, until a May 19 headline screamed the previous day's news:

"8 Killed as Volcano Blows — Ash Spreads to Montana."

The headlines continued with the coming days, with reports on the ash that blanketed Washington, the rising death tolls from the volcano's destruction, and the region's changing landscape from lahars and other wreckage from the mountain.