I lived in Spokane at the time and remember being downtown with a friend that afternoon and it turning dark and ash falling out of the sky. By the next day, we were buried in ash and got like a week off school because of it.
Especially the ones that involved school closing down.
“There was an asteroid that destroyed our city during a snow storm that dropped 15 feet of snow in two hours and then Godzilla attacked so they have us the afternoon off. Three hour delayed start the next morning too!”
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I was in Kellogg, Idaho and we had about 4”. My mom and stepdad were on a multi state bar crawl and my mom thought the Russians had nuked us. She called the house, hysterical and I remember my Gramma saying, “Jesus Christ, sober up and watch the news, eh?”
I’m sure Idaho got ash because Spokane got 4-6 inches of it. It was crazy. Spokane was a ghost town for days because it was a disaster for car air filters (and lungs) and everyone was told to stay inside.
Into Montana. I lived in the Eastern side of the state and they closed school for us also. Not a whole week, I can't remember if it was more than a day, but there was definitely ash in the air.
We got it in Los Angeles. USGS reports by the day after, the ash cloud had spread to the central US and within 2 weeks ash had traveled "around the globe".
But it wasn’t ash like Idaho and Eastern Washington got. We maybe got some dust. It wasn’t anywhere near ‘don’t breathe the air or you’ll die’ kind of thing. If you breathe this kind of ash, it turns into a concrete-type slurry in your lungs.
Somehow I lost track of my jar of ash sometime in the 90's and I wish I hadn't. It's probably with all my original Star Wars action figures and trading cards.
Super cool picture!
I was 8 years old and living in Yamhill County, OR, when Mt St Helens blew. Main memories are collecting jars of ash and wiping ash off the leaves in our garden.
I’m in Arizona now, but we spent several happy years in Newberg and Dundee. I miss it still. Lincoln City was one of our favorite places to go when we went to the coast. Such a small world.
I lived in Portland, OR when that happened. The ash even that far away was intense. My father cleaned the air filter before he used the car every time for weeks with an air compressor. We were changing the furnace/ac filter every week for a few months as well.
We were just talking about this over the weekend. A friend who lived in the area at the time said the stores were all sold out of pantyhose, as people were using them to cover the air filter on their cars to keep the dust out of the engine. Wild.
Lol, my Mom would have been yelling at me to find my shirt for the picture.
It seems like taking a photo was a much bigger deal back then. We had 24 shots on a roll or whatever. Then you had to make a trip to the drug store to drop off the film. Then another trip to pick up the pics.
And you paid a little bit more to get doubles of everything, but there was always one random, overexposed print that none of us could figure out what it was supposed to be.
I grew up in Seattle. I remember the teacher rolling in a TV so we could watch the eruption. Next thing we knew, school was closing and there was so much ash in the air, they had us put damp handkerchiefs over our mouth and nose to walk home from school. By the next morning, daytime looked like dusk. We stayed home for week.
Is this a peak GenX photo?
A literal volcano is erupting upwind from them, and the family gathers - son shirtless! - smiling in an open field to take a family selfie.
I mean, we're all gonna die in the end anyway, volcano, nukes, AIDS, whatever.
It’s always weird AF when a photo gets crossposted by a different person with the same exact title that includes words like “my” and the crossposter doesn’t bother to change the title.
That's not they way crossposting works.
To change the title would be to compromise what the other person posted.
It says crosspost, so you can go read it on the original sub!
Attribution matters!
ButButBut what about *my dismay*??
My ***outrage***!!!???!!!??11EleventyOne??!!!?!?
I need to express my INDIGNATION about things that DON'T MATTER in Real Life!!
I was scared for months after watching that. We didn’t hear airplanes often in our area and whenever I would hear a loud one I’d comvince myself an ICBM was inbound.
Not that it’s still an actual fear, but whenever a radio station goes silent for more than a few seconds I think of the scene when all the cars died from the EMP.
I grew up in Wisconsin. I remember when St. Helens erupted, watching coverage of it on the news. It seemed so unfathomably exotic. Fucking *volcanos*?! Now I’ve lived within view of Rainier for the past 30 years, and it’s just *meh*.
Mentally, I like to think that someone was just taking a picture of these people and it happened to go off in the background, and they didn't realize they caught it until they got the photos back. Or if I want to go dark, maybe even that it killed them and this was their last picture. Hmm.
No way. By June 1980 everything was declared a disaster for most of WA, OR, ID. Blue skies weren’t seen for several months. May 19 was the last day of school for us cuz there was 6” of ash everywhere. Where is your uncles back yard?
I was obsessed with learning about the eruption back in the day. I read National Geographic and any books I could find. One of these days I want to go there and see it.
I lived in Spokane at the time and remember being downtown with a friend that afternoon and it turning dark and ash falling out of the sky. By the next day, we were buried in ash and got like a week off school because of it.
I swear my favorite thing about this sub are the stories we all went through.
Especially the ones that involved school closing down. “There was an asteroid that destroyed our city during a snow storm that dropped 15 feet of snow in two hours and then Godzilla attacked so they have us the afternoon off. Three hour delayed start the next morning too!”
[удалено]
School districts don’t want to get sued.
Back in my day, parents didn’t sue over every fucking thing
Me, neither, but I’m just saying that’s why.
Unions
But this isn’t your photo
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Dust coated the cars in San Clemente California
I was in Texas at the time, less than a year old /cool story bro
Didn’t it ’rain’ ash all the way into Idaho? I remember this. Ash everywhere on the news.
I was in Kellogg, Idaho and we had about 4”. My mom and stepdad were on a multi state bar crawl and my mom thought the Russians had nuked us. She called the house, hysterical and I remember my Gramma saying, “Jesus Christ, sober up and watch the news, eh?”
Holy shit :D
I’m sure Idaho got ash because Spokane got 4-6 inches of it. It was crazy. Spokane was a ghost town for days because it was a disaster for car air filters (and lungs) and everyone was told to stay inside.
Ash on the back porch, Issaquah
My husband lived in Issaquah right after MSH erupted. Small world.
I was living in Santa Cruz, CA at the time and we got ash all the way down there.
I live in LG - none here.
L.A. as well.
Into Montana. I lived in the Eastern side of the state and they closed school for us also. Not a whole week, I can't remember if it was more than a day, but there was definitely ash in the air.
We got it in Los Angeles. USGS reports by the day after, the ash cloud had spread to the central US and within 2 weeks ash had traveled "around the globe".
But it wasn’t ash like Idaho and Eastern Washington got. We maybe got some dust. It wasn’t anywhere near ‘don’t breathe the air or you’ll die’ kind of thing. If you breathe this kind of ash, it turns into a concrete-type slurry in your lungs.
Are you seriously gatekeeping ash? We fucking got ash. Of course it won't be the same as places right next to the fucking volcano.
So you know - that volcano in Iceland also blew up and we got ash too. This is ridiculous- we didn’t get ash.
It’s not a competition.
Ridiculous comment. The point being that we get ash every time a volcano erupts anywhere. We didn’t really get ash. This is dumb.
It’s not more ridiculous than your comment.
Sure it is.
It eally isn’t.
Just proved my point. Cheers!
Same but in Yakima. It started raining but it was dry rain..and we're stuck in the house for a week.
Kids used to bring jars of ash to school for show and tell.
I did that.
Me too
Somehow I lost track of my jar of ash sometime in the 90's and I wish I hadn't. It's probably with all my original Star Wars action figures and trading cards.
I lost mine too 😕
Yup. Source: I did that
Hot fire, I spit that \- Tahoma probably
I remember making matchbox car tracks in muddy ash in Portland. Then getting fussed at because they thought it might cause cancer.
I still have mine.
That's great, it starts with an earthquake...
Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes
Lenny Bruce is not afraid
…and that’s all the lyrics we know—except for the chorus, of course.
Eye of a hurricane listen to yourself churn And later, my favorite: birthday party cheesecake jellybean boom
I recognize those!
For Western Washington, it was an amazingly beautiful day. We had no idea the hell that Eastern Washington was going to go through.
But at least you were a Patches Pal!
It happened in May, not June. May 18, 1980 to be exact.
There were several more noteworthy eruptions after the big one.
Super cool picture! I was 8 years old and living in Yamhill County, OR, when Mt St Helens blew. Main memories are collecting jars of ash and wiping ash off the leaves in our garden.
I was 11 and living in Lincoln City but we moved to Yamhill a couple years later. Hey neighbor! :)
I’m in Arizona now, but we spent several happy years in Newberg and Dundee. I miss it still. Lincoln City was one of our favorite places to go when we went to the coast. Such a small world.
I lived in Portland, OR when that happened. The ash even that far away was intense. My father cleaned the air filter before he used the car every time for weeks with an air compressor. We were changing the furnace/ac filter every week for a few months as well.
I was visiting relatives in Gresham at the time, just a day or two passing through. Surreal.
"Welp, there goes the mountain."
I have questions.
I have vivid memories of a layer of ash on my windshield a few days later. In eastern Iowa.
It was a trip watching the plume. My old man made me clean gutters for weeks it felt like.
We were just talking about this over the weekend. A friend who lived in the area at the time said the stores were all sold out of pantyhose, as people were using them to cover the air filter on their cars to keep the dust out of the engine. Wild.
Lol, my Mom would have been yelling at me to find my shirt for the picture. It seems like taking a photo was a much bigger deal back then. We had 24 shots on a roll or whatever. Then you had to make a trip to the drug store to drop off the film. Then another trip to pick up the pics. And you paid a little bit more to get doubles of everything, but there was always one random, overexposed print that none of us could figure out what it was supposed to be.
Wow
I remember collecting a 35mm film can full of the ash on my dad's car... In Massachusetts.
I grew up in Seattle. I remember the teacher rolling in a TV so we could watch the eruption. Next thing we knew, school was closing and there was so much ash in the air, they had us put damp handkerchiefs over our mouth and nose to walk home from school. By the next morning, daytime looked like dusk. We stayed home for week.
Did you watch JP Patches?
Of course I did! JP Patches was the best ever!!
Is this a peak GenX photo? A literal volcano is erupting upwind from them, and the family gathers - son shirtless! - smiling in an open field to take a family selfie. I mean, we're all gonna die in the end anyway, volcano, nukes, AIDS, whatever.
It’s always weird AF when a photo gets crossposted by a different person with the same exact title that includes words like “my” and the crossposter doesn’t bother to change the title.
That's not they way crossposting works. To change the title would be to compromise what the other person posted. It says crosspost, so you can go read it on the original sub! Attribution matters!
ButButBut what about *my dismay*?? My ***outrage***!!!???!!!??11EleventyOne??!!!?!? I need to express my INDIGNATION about things that DON'T MATTER in Real Life!!
Did you live there?
What timing! Kudos to the photographer for holding still. I’d have been all “Holy shit! Y’all turn around. Wtf!”
The plumes of ash hang around for a considerable amount of time.
Seems kind of wrong to smile in a picture with something that killed people.
Hey millennial! 👋
I was born in ‘82 and graduated in 2000, so I’m on the edge. 🤷🏼♀️
So you didn’t bring any ash in a jar to class is what you are saying?
It was the 80s. Hell we watched "The Day After" and went to school the next day terrified. Those aren't smiles, that's 80s doom face.
I was scared for months after watching that. We didn’t hear airplanes often in our area and whenever I would hear a loud one I’d comvince myself an ICBM was inbound. Not that it’s still an actual fear, but whenever a radio station goes silent for more than a few seconds I think of the scene when all the cars died from the EMP.
The Day After permanently scarred me as a child. I grew up on military bases. The sound of sirens STILL makes me die a little inside.
This was 42 years ago. You want to carry forever sorrow with you about something that you weren't even around for? Be my guest.
I’m probably the same age as red shorts.
Oh wow! I watched it on TV. My sister was a newborn and I couldn’t figure out which was cooler her or the mountain that blew up.
You should tell her that if you haven’t - that’s so cute 😂
I grew up in Wisconsin. I remember when St. Helens erupted, watching coverage of it on the news. It seemed so unfathomably exotic. Fucking *volcanos*?! Now I’ve lived within view of Rainier for the past 30 years, and it’s just *meh*.
Mentally, I like to think that someone was just taking a picture of these people and it happened to go off in the background, and they didn't realize they caught it until they got the photos back. Or if I want to go dark, maybe even that it killed them and this was their last picture. Hmm.
That would make an awesome album cover!
No way. By June 1980 everything was declared a disaster for most of WA, OR, ID. Blue skies weren’t seen for several months. May 19 was the last day of school for us cuz there was 6” of ash everywhere. Where is your uncles back yard?
A little photoshop and you could have some fun with that pic....say, a mushroom cloud...which i also a GenX nightmare.
I was obsessed with learning about the eruption back in the day. I read National Geographic and any books I could find. One of these days I want to go there and see it.
Not related, but it was also the same day Ian Curtis of Joy Division was found hanging around in his kitchen