Ring Around The Lava Dome

I really wanted to have the title to this post as Ring Around the Lava Dome, Hang On It's Gonna Blowsy. :)

This was just interesting to me, as an inhabitant of Washington state, home of Mt. St. Helens. I am always fascinated by how nature and our planet react to natural events. In this case, a volcanic eruption that began 28 years ago today, on May 18th, 1980. When the volcano blew that day, there was already a glacier on the mountain that was carried along with the mix of debris into the atmosphere. Now, the glacier reformed, but around the new lava dome.

NASA has some amazing pictures from the USGS showing the growth of the dome and the glacier that rings around it.

Even though I grew up in Washington state, I wasn't living here in 1980. We were living in Iowa then, and I remember worrying about my parents and my brother Dave and his family who were not too far from the volcano. As it turned out, they weren't hurt, but they all got their share of volcanic dust. Nothing like the places that got it in eastern Washington and even further to the east than that! What we did see in Iowa took a few days to get there. We were outside at our son Greg's baseball game and I was sitting in the grass with some of the other moms. The skies where clear, but in Iowa, a storm can come up very suddenly, so when I saw this huge dark cloud I thought that's what it was. But instead, it was the dust cloud from the volcano. What was so weird about it was that it was so big, so dark, and so quiet. Many of the other people didn't even notice it going over! As it turned out, in July of 1980 we moved back to Washington state and so we had essentially 'front row seats' for the following eruptions. So, where were you when the volcano blew?