Mt St facts

While investigating facts about Mt St, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Robert Landsberg, a photographer who died documenting the massive 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens. Realizing he was too close to get away safely, he continued to shoot footage until he was killed. His body was found buried beneath ash, protecting his camera film.

When Mt. St. Helens erupted, the blast was heard in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, and California. However, the blast was not heard in Portland, Oregon only 50 miles away.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 24 of the best facts about Mt St I managed to collect.

1. Even though the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens is considered a medium sized eruption relative to other volcanic eruptions, the landslide that happened less than a second before was the largest landslide in recorded history

2. Harry Glicken's was devastated when his mentor David Johnson died during the eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980. Glicken met the same fate 11 year's later during the eruption of Mt Unzen in Japan. Glicken and Johnson are the only American volcanologists to have died in volcanic eruptions.

3. David Johnson, volcanologist. Successfully fought a Chief Brody-like fight to keep the summit Mt St Helens & Spirit Lake visitor-free for 2 months before the cataclysm. Instead of 1000 deaths there was 53; him among them, radioing "...Vancouver, this is it" seconds before he was incinerated.

4. Mt. St Helens erupted while the Grateful Dead were performing 'Fire on the Mountain' in Portland, OR on June 12, 1980.

5. The celebrity holdout of the Mt. St Helens eruption, Harry Truman, refused to believe the volcano would be a threat to him. His family was futile in an attempt to bribe him away with whisky. On 05/18/80 Harry was buried under 150 ft of volcanic ash with his 16 cats.

6. The sound wave from the Mt St Helens explosion was so big that it skipped Portland and touched down in Eugene Oregon

7. A man named Harry Truman refused to leave his lodge below Mt St Helens despite evacuation orders. He is presumed to have been buried under 150 feet (46 m) of volcanic landslide debris.

8. Robert Landsburg, a photographer, gave his life to preserve his last pictures of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption before being covered in ash.

9. 57 people were killed in the 1980 Mt. St Helens Eruption with temperatures reaching 680°F

10. The greatest volcanic eruption of the 20th century was 30 times the magnitude of the Mt. St. Helens explosion.

Mt St data charts

For your convenience take a look at Mt St figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

What is true about mt st?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

Ludger Sylbaris who in 1902 was one of the few survivors of the Mt. Pelee eruption at St. Pierre, because he had been imprisoned underground the day before for public drunkenness and wounding a man with a cutlass.

David Johnson, a volcanologist studying Mt. St. Helens from 6 miles away when it erupted. He made a transmission stating: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" as the volcano erupted. The transmission went dead at this point, and his body was never recovered. - source

About GOES-3, originally a weather imaging satellite launched in 1978, tracked the Mt. St. Helens eruption, was a communications satellite later in life, ultimately was able to directly link North and South Pole, when placed in graveyard orbit in 2016 was one the longest functioning spacecraft. - source

Photographer Reid Blackburn, who died on May 18, 1980, who had recorded events leading up to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens for NatGeo, the USGS and a newspaper. Reid was killed when he was caught in the cloud of ash and gas," He was found 4 days later.

The last volcanic eruption in the US, Mt. St. Helens, also triggered one of the largest landslides in recorded history. - source

One other volcano in the Cascade Range has erupted in the 20th century aside from Mt. St. Helens, Lassen Peak in Shasta County, California on May 22, 1915.

A man named Harry S. Truman died today in 1980, when a 150 foot high pyroclastic flow from Mt. St. Helens buried his house. He refused to heed warnings and leave his home.

The eruption of Mt St Helens in WA was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes

May 18th is the 35th anniversary of Mt St Helens erupting.

Harry R. Truman, 83, who refused to evacuate when Mt. St. Helens was about to erupt.

The Mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991 was 10x larger than Mt St Helens' and caused an aerosol haze that cooled the earth by 0.5°C over 3 years.