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When Mount St. Helens Blew Its Top · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and sitting in for Jerry today is
0:17
Speaker 1: our great friend and co producer Dave c and the
0:21
Speaker 1: sea stands for cool. Say hello, David, everybody, that's pretty.
0:27
Speaker 1: That's a really great Dave impression. He's a he's a troll. Yes,
0:32
Speaker 1: I always hear him is wal wal wal walt wal Uh.
0:37
Speaker 1: Dave is great. I wish you all knew him, but
0:39
Speaker 1: we do, and so he's ours. You're gonna have to
0:41
Speaker 1: take our word for it. That's right, speaking of take
0:44
Speaker 1: our word for it, Chuck, I have to say to
0:47
Speaker 1: all the people who don't know much about Mount St.
0:49
Speaker 1: Helen's prepared to have your socks knocked off, or your
0:52
Speaker 1: lid blown or your skin seared off of your your muscle. Yeah,
0:57
Speaker 1: this is a good one. This is uh. I mean,
1:00
Speaker 1: this is so bread and butter stuff you should know
1:02
Speaker 1: it is. I don't know why it took us almost
1:04
Speaker 1: sixteen years to get to it. And none of that
1:07
Speaker 1: margarine stuff are low fat. It's like full milk fat butter.
1:11
Speaker 1: Bread and butter stuff you should know salted butter, even
1:15
Speaker 1: you like salted Huh. It depends on what you're using
1:17
Speaker 1: it for. I like just plain unsalted butter, even on
1:21
Speaker 1: a bread and butter piece of like bread with butter. Yeah,
1:24
Speaker 1: mainly with like baking and cooking. It's like that's when
1:27
Speaker 1: it matters. Yeah, I got too. Um, what's your brand?
1:31
Speaker 1: Oh boy? It depends. I mean I love to get
1:35
Speaker 1: the hate to be that guy, but I dude, love
1:37
Speaker 1: to get the local butter when we get to our
1:39
Speaker 1: farmer's market and get it from our c s A.
1:41
Speaker 1: What's wrong with that? Well, I don't know. Can't you
1:45
Speaker 1: say parquake? Can you right? You must be a social
1:47
Speaker 1: justice warrior you buy local butter? Do you like that?
1:51
Speaker 1: What's the stuff? The Irish butter in the grocery store?
1:54
Speaker 1: That's my brand? Uh? Carry Gold? Carry Gold. That's good too,
1:58
Speaker 1: Like I've I've reached arched it, like I've literally researched
2:02
Speaker 1: but the butter because I want to get the most
2:04
Speaker 1: bang from my buck, and it is at the top
2:06
Speaker 1: of basically every list. It's of like any butter of
2:09
Speaker 1: any kind. It's really really good butter. Yeah, I totally agree.
2:12
Speaker 1: I love carry Gold. I take that stuff camping. Yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: I carried it out in my pocket. Well, I like
2:18
Speaker 1: that you can get a tub. It's a smaller tub,
2:20
Speaker 1: but I do like a spreadable tub as opposed to
2:22
Speaker 1: a stick. I haven't seen the tub. We have a
2:25
Speaker 1: stick because we have a cute little butter dish, so
2:29
Speaker 1: we have we used the sticks. So anyway back to um,
2:34
Speaker 1: Mount St. Helen's the episode today. I was four years
2:38
Speaker 1: old when this happened, so I mean I didn't know
2:40
Speaker 1: what was going on, but I imagine you were like,
2:42
Speaker 1: holy cow, this is one of the most amazing things
2:44
Speaker 1: I've ever seen on my TV. Yeah, I was nine
2:47
Speaker 1: and I remember it being a big deal. But it's
2:51
Speaker 1: funny when I was researching this and then watching, UM,
2:54
Speaker 1: there's a really really great thing on YouTube that I
2:56
Speaker 1: recommend that A and He put out, You're ago it
3:00
Speaker 1: had to be. It was called minute by Minute Colin. Uh,
3:04
Speaker 1: the eruption of Mount St. Helen's really gripping stuff as
3:08
Speaker 1: a any used to do. You know, they probably still
3:10
Speaker 1: do that kind of stuff, but I don't know. Um,
3:12
Speaker 1: all of the media around it, I was thinking, like man,
3:15
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it was more regional or
3:18
Speaker 1: if it truly was nationwide. But I remember the eruption,
3:21
Speaker 1: but I didn't remember like the six weeks leading up
3:25
Speaker 1: to it, which was a very big deal. Yeah, although
3:29
Speaker 1: I think it was more of like a yeah, a
3:31
Speaker 1: regional thing for this the lead up. And then also
3:34
Speaker 1: if you were a geologist, a vulcanologists, a seismologist, anything
3:39
Speaker 1: that had to do with volcanoes erupting or mountains, then
3:42
Speaker 1: it would have been a big deal to you two.
3:44
Speaker 1: And it definitely attracted them from far and wide. And
3:47
Speaker 1: because there was so much warning, um, and it was
3:51
Speaker 1: able to buy it. I mean, Mount St. Helens was
3:54
Speaker 1: able to kind of draw to it like a magnet.
3:56
Speaker 1: All of these amazingly well trained researchers, Um, they were
4:02
Speaker 1: there when it went off. And it's probably the most
4:04
Speaker 1: best documented volcano in history because of that. Yeah, I mean,
4:08
Speaker 1: because like you said, the Mount st. Helens is basically
4:11
Speaker 1: saying it's coming everyone. Would you like to document this? Yeah,
4:14
Speaker 1: I'm telling you again, it's coming, and I'll show you
4:18
Speaker 1: in lots of different scary ways that it's coming. And
4:21
Speaker 1: people left, people stayed, people came there, people like tourists
4:28
Speaker 1: came to see this thing. So let's get into it. Okay,
4:33
Speaker 1: so just a real quick refresher, we've done um volcanoes,
4:37
Speaker 1: and I think we've done super volcanoes too, because that
4:39
Speaker 1: sounds like us. Yeah, was volcanoes, seventeen super volcanoes. Okay.
4:46
Speaker 1: So we talked a lot about how volcanoes work in
4:48
Speaker 1: those episodes, So if you want to know a lot
4:50
Speaker 1: more in depth, go check those out. But just as
4:53
Speaker 1: a refresher for the specific kind of volcano that Mount St.
4:56
Speaker 1: Helens is. It's a strato volcano, and it's created when
5:01
Speaker 1: one younger plate is subducted under an older plate, and
5:06
Speaker 1: as the younger plate goes down into the bowels of
5:09
Speaker 1: the Earth, all of the rocket carries with it gets
5:12
Speaker 1: heated up. The same with water too, and that stuff
5:14
Speaker 1: travels upward because it's less dense than the surrounding mantle
5:18
Speaker 1: down below, and as it gets closer and close to
5:21
Speaker 1: the crust, it wants to pop out of there, but
5:23
Speaker 1: it can't necessarily, sometimes it can, and when it can,
5:27
Speaker 1: it just spews out all sorts of molten lava and
5:29
Speaker 1: that builds the volcano in a kind of a cone shape,
5:33
Speaker 1: which is what Mount Saint Helen's was up until May. Yeah. Um,
5:38
Speaker 1: it's a part of the cascade arc arranged there in
5:41
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, and all of this happened, and you know,
5:45
Speaker 1: geologically speaking, pretty quickly. It happened over the course of
5:49
Speaker 1: about forty years in the case of Mountain St. Helens,
5:52
Speaker 1: which is pretty speedy. And uh, Ed helped us out
5:55
Speaker 1: with this. We did a great job on this article. Um.
5:58
Speaker 1: And Ed points out that you know in the Northwest,
6:00
Speaker 1: that's why you see so many you know, uh sort
6:03
Speaker 1: of coney mountains like that is because of this cascade
6:07
Speaker 1: arc and how these mountains were formed, you know, not
6:10
Speaker 1: too long ago, right, Yeah, forty thousand years ago, maybe
6:13
Speaker 1: less St Helens And I think the whole arc is
6:17
Speaker 1: less than a hundred right, um, so the whole thing
6:20
Speaker 1: that's driving Mount St. Helens. And apparently also there's some other, um,
6:26
Speaker 1: I guess volcanic mountains in the area, like Atoms. I
6:29
Speaker 1: think Mount Adams is one as well. But there's a
6:33
Speaker 1: there's a magma chamber somewhere under there, I think, um
6:36
Speaker 1: possibly miles and miles below the surface. But under normal circumstances,
6:40
Speaker 1: like I said, when a Stratto volcanoes formed, the the
6:43
Speaker 1: lava just kind of is able to find cracks in
6:45
Speaker 1: the crust and like it's it's released through there and
6:48
Speaker 1: it builds the mountain up slowly and slowly. But if
6:51
Speaker 1: there's not a crack in the crust, as in the
6:53
Speaker 1: case where Mount st Helens is um, that magma starts
6:57
Speaker 1: to back up. It hits the crust and it starts
6:59
Speaker 1: to back up below and all of a sudden you
7:02
Speaker 1: have a lot of stuff going on. That um makes
7:06
Speaker 1: things go kaboom when the right set of circumstances happens. Yeah,
7:11
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty notable. This magma chamber is uh,
7:15
Speaker 1: well I is in was quite large and like you said,
7:19
Speaker 1: it's it's looking for a place to go. But if
7:21
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a place to go, what will happen?
7:23
Speaker 1: And as you'll see, this is what happened in the
7:24
Speaker 1: case of Mount st Helens is it starts bulging, and
7:28
Speaker 1: like the mountain, if you're a geologist, it's super exciting
7:32
Speaker 1: to see this happen. Um, even though it's very scary
7:34
Speaker 1: and dangerous. But when a geologist sees an actual mountains
7:37
Speaker 1: start to bulge out in a direction and we're talking
7:41
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of feet of bulge over the course
7:43
Speaker 1: of a pretty short period of time. Then it's pretty like, Uh,
7:47
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty notable thing. And that's exactly what
7:50
Speaker 1: was happening in the case of the magma chamber there
7:52
Speaker 1: in UH in Washington. Yeah, like this pressure is building
7:56
Speaker 1: up so much it's causing a boil on the mountain.
7:59
Speaker 1: The mountain grows a goiter basically, and that's just full
8:03
Speaker 1: of pressure and magma just waiting to go off. It
8:06
Speaker 1: doesn't always go off. And in fact Mount St. Helen's
8:09
Speaker 1: had two bulges also called crypto domes, which is pretty
8:12
Speaker 1: awesome UM, from previous volcanic eruptions. One was called Goat
8:17
Speaker 1: Rocks Bulge UM, and then the other one was called
8:20
Speaker 1: the Sugar Bowl bulge, and they just never like the
8:25
Speaker 1: magma found its way out other ways, but the bulge
8:28
Speaker 1: was left. This is a new bulge, and like you said,
8:30
Speaker 1: it was growing I think about six ft a day.
8:33
Speaker 1: Every day it kept growing another six ft, which is
8:37
Speaker 1: really fast for a mountain to grow. Uh. And that
8:40
Speaker 1: was one of the big signs initially that that something
8:43
Speaker 1: was going on. And and one more thing before we
8:46
Speaker 1: started to get into um Mount St. Helens itself, Chuck,
8:49
Speaker 1: I think we need to say like Mount St. Helens
8:51
Speaker 1: was big. It was a big eruption, but it was
8:55
Speaker 1: not the biggest eruption Mountain St. Helens has ever had.
8:58
Speaker 1: Apparently the biggest eruption it's ever came just about four
9:01
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, which is within um traditional like folk
9:05
Speaker 1: tale memory. Yeah, I mean it had been an active
9:09
Speaker 1: volcano for forty thousand years, but the big one before
9:14
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty was. Yeah, like you said, four, I was
9:17
Speaker 1: trying to look at a specific year, but let's just
9:19
Speaker 1: say four thousand years ago, because once you get back
9:22
Speaker 1: that far, you know who cares? Who cares? But it became,
9:26
Speaker 1: like you said, part of folklore. The indigenous people there,
9:30
Speaker 1: especially the pulla Up people, called the mountain LeWitt l
9:33
Speaker 1: O O w I T and there was a Lout's
9:37
Speaker 1: brewing company, so shout them out. This is one of
9:40
Speaker 1: those things where, uh, I thought, I wonder why, because
9:45
Speaker 1: there's been such a push to change names of things
9:48
Speaker 1: over the past like a decade or so, this is
9:51
Speaker 1: one that was. It seems so like sort of egregious
9:55
Speaker 1: that we should call it LeWitt and not Mount st.
9:58
Speaker 1: Helens that I'm pretty curious. I'm sure there's been pushes
10:01
Speaker 1: over the years to get it changed, but the Europeans,
10:03
Speaker 1: of course named it Mountain St. Helen's in after Captain
10:09
Speaker 1: George Vancouver. If that name rings a bell, it should
10:14
Speaker 1: gave the name of it because of a diplomat name,
10:16
Speaker 1: Alan fits Herbert didn't call it fits Herbert peak or
10:22
Speaker 1: anything like that because his noble title was Baron St.
10:25
Speaker 1: Helen's God. But here's the rub is that Allan fitz
10:29
Speaker 1: Herbert never even saw Mountain St. Helen's the mountain named
10:33
Speaker 1: after him, So like, I don't know, maybe maybe let's
10:37
Speaker 1: call this one LeWitt. Yeah, I think that's a great
10:40
Speaker 1: idea actually, And the reason they call it lewe It
10:42
Speaker 1: that that was she was named after Um, a like
10:46
Speaker 1: a famous volcanic fire tender woman, Um and low Itt
10:51
Speaker 1: and a couple of other men who fell in love
10:53
Speaker 1: with her and fought for her. Um became low it
10:57
Speaker 1: became Mount St. Helen's or lou It if you want
10:59
Speaker 1: to call it, at and then the other the other
11:02
Speaker 1: men who were fighting for became mount Hood and mount Atoms.
11:05
Speaker 1: They were smited by the creator God and turned into
11:08
Speaker 1: mountains for fighting Um. And there's legends not just from
11:12
Speaker 1: the pool up, but other indigenous tribes around the area
11:15
Speaker 1: that something really big happened, and it looks like what
11:18
Speaker 1: it is is a geo myth, which we've talked about before.
11:21
Speaker 1: And I think the Great Floods episode that has been
11:23
Speaker 1: handed down generation after generation that describes this enormous eruption
11:28
Speaker 1: four thousand years ago pretty good stuff. Yeah, for sure.
11:32
Speaker 1: And it was a big eruption too. There's just one
11:33
Speaker 1: other thing. There is a layer of tefra of basically
11:37
Speaker 1: volcanic ash and debris and stuff that is so thick
11:42
Speaker 1: and so wide it goes up into British Columbia and
11:46
Speaker 1: sixty two miles away from Mount St. Helen. It's still
11:49
Speaker 1: twenty inches thick, almost two ft thick of ash sixty
11:53
Speaker 1: two miles away. That's how big that four thousand year
11:55
Speaker 1: ago eruption was. That's huge. And all this to say
11:59
Speaker 1: that Mount Helen's uh which has an asked, by the way,
12:02
Speaker 1: did you know that? Uh? Yeah, I did, you keep saying, Helen.
12:06
Speaker 1: I just wondered. I'm I'm being short because I don't
12:09
Speaker 1: want to take up too much time talking about Certainly
12:14
Speaker 1: that's good. That reminds me of the guy in college
12:17
Speaker 1: who fell on the sidewalk and his books splayed out
12:20
Speaker 1: and then he acted like he was reading. Yeah, I
12:22
Speaker 1: love that story. I forgot about him. Um, all of
12:25
Speaker 1: us to say is that Mount St Helen's had been,
12:28
Speaker 1: you know, active, had a long history of activity. So
12:31
Speaker 1: it's not like anyone ever thought, well, well, that thing
12:34
Speaker 1: is done and it's never gonna happen again. No, definitely not.
12:37
Speaker 1: Because also in the nineteenth century there was a lot
12:40
Speaker 1: of um eruptions too. There's a painting by a Canadian
12:43
Speaker 1: artist named Paul Kane who painted in eighteen forty seven eruption.
12:47
Speaker 1: So I mean start starting in the nineteenth century. Um,
12:50
Speaker 1: Mount St Helen's was documented pretty pretty clearly scientifically too,
12:56
Speaker 1: as as being an eruptive volcano, disruptive volcan you know
13:00
Speaker 1: you can almost say, all right, shall we take a break. Yeah,
13:04
Speaker 1: that's a nice prelude, I think so too. All right,
13:07
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this geo. Okay, So we
13:34
Speaker 1: got a nice background on Mount St Helen's that had
13:36
Speaker 1: been very active for about or on a off, active
13:39
Speaker 1: for forty thousand years, uh, including I believe the last
13:44
Speaker 1: sort of big one was in eighteen fifty seven. Um,
13:48
Speaker 1: not too long after that, in nineteen o eight, about
13:50
Speaker 1: a million acres of land became part of Columbia National Forest,
13:54
Speaker 1: which was hence renamed Gifford. Uh a pin shot or
13:58
Speaker 1: pin show. I never know how to say that the
14:00
Speaker 1: Bronson Pinchot National Forest National forest, and that was in
14:03
Speaker 1: nine and Mount St. Helens is inside that National Forest.
14:08
Speaker 1: Um all this uh, this sort of a long way
14:10
Speaker 1: of saying. It wasn't like super populated. It didn't have
14:14
Speaker 1: wasn't surrounded by neighborhoods and suburbs and stuff like that.
14:17
Speaker 1: But there was something or is still something called Spirit
14:20
Speaker 1: Lake there um near the base of the mountain, which
14:23
Speaker 1: is uh, they have like youth camps there. People had
14:27
Speaker 1: cabins here and there. There were recreational activities that all
14:32
Speaker 1: over the place. So it's not like no one was there,
14:34
Speaker 1: but it wasn't heavily populated right well put so, Um,
14:39
Speaker 1: the whole thing starts. Actually even before the whole thing started,
14:42
Speaker 1: and I saw in nineteen seventy five the two volcanologists
14:46
Speaker 1: published a paper UM saying that it was very likely
14:50
Speaker 1: Mount St. Helen's was going to erupt in the twentieth
14:53
Speaker 1: century at some point, like a big one and five
14:56
Speaker 1: years later, in March eighty, the whole thing was kicked
14:59
Speaker 1: off by h four point oh earthquake, which is nothing
15:03
Speaker 1: to sneeze at, and it was at the mountain. Like
15:05
Speaker 1: this earthquake took place at the mountain, and all of
15:08
Speaker 1: a sudden, within five days there were quake storms. There
15:12
Speaker 1: was twenty four quakes of four point oh or greater
15:16
Speaker 1: within eight hours. When a volcano starts doing that and
15:20
Speaker 1: you're detecting it, you you, that's when the geologists come
15:23
Speaker 1: running from far and wide. Yeah, so they you know,
15:26
Speaker 1: the word gets out, and they did come running from
15:29
Speaker 1: foreig and wide and they you know, set up camp
15:31
Speaker 1: there at various places. Other just sort of um, as
15:36
Speaker 1: I learned from watching this uh any special that um
15:39
Speaker 1: there are like volcano chasers even that um, they hear
15:43
Speaker 1: about this stuff. They're fascinated by it. I guess it's
15:46
Speaker 1: just sort of amateur geo enthusiasts. And people started kind
15:50
Speaker 1: of coming in there because they got wind that something
15:53
Speaker 1: may be brewing at Mount St. Helen's including and this
15:56
Speaker 1: is you know, they're all kinds of people we could
15:58
Speaker 1: feature story wise, but one gentleman we are going to feature.
16:01
Speaker 1: His name was David Johnston UH, and he was a
16:05
Speaker 1: volcanologist at the U s g S, the United States
16:08
Speaker 1: Geographical Survey, and he was one of the UM. There
16:11
Speaker 1: were some great interviews with him in this A and
16:13
Speaker 1: E special. He was very young guy, UM, super excited
16:17
Speaker 1: to be there, and he was one of the ones
16:18
Speaker 1: kind of sounding the alarm along with his partner and
16:21
Speaker 1: this guy named Don Swanson about hey, like, you know,
16:25
Speaker 1: the s is getting real here everybody, and it looks
16:29
Speaker 1: like things like people need to start leaving. Yeah, like
16:33
Speaker 1: the thing is is there are the people who did
16:35
Speaker 1: live on the mountain were not the kind of folk
16:37
Speaker 1: who listened to like, you know, the governmentcil neton college
16:41
Speaker 1: boys or the government to be told like leave your home.
16:45
Speaker 1: And then also there was um those youth groups that
16:48
Speaker 1: were like you're going to ruin our week at Spirit Lake. UM.
16:52
Speaker 1: There was also Weyerhauser the first base exactly it's like
16:57
Speaker 1: a roller rink over there. UM. And then there was
17:00
Speaker 1: Weyerhauser who had a contract to be able to log
17:03
Speaker 1: on the on the mountain. They definitely didn't want to
17:06
Speaker 1: have to shut down operations. So there's a lot of pressure,
17:09
Speaker 1: a surprising amount of pressure, you know, more than you
17:11
Speaker 1: would think to keep them outain open, and David Johnston
17:15
Speaker 1: and Don Swanson and some of the other colleagues were like,
17:18
Speaker 1: you really can't do this, and they managed to convince
17:21
Speaker 1: the governor of Washington that it was the right move.
17:24
Speaker 1: And then later on, as we'll see, there was even
17:26
Speaker 1: more pressure to reopen because things didn't go as fast
17:30
Speaker 1: as everyone thought, and they managed to push that back
17:33
Speaker 1: as well, and as a result, David Johnston is frequently
17:36
Speaker 1: credited for saving thousands of lives potentially, which is pretty cool.
17:40
Speaker 1: I mean, and everything I've seen about and he was
17:42
Speaker 1: a genuinely great person and also like a really great
17:47
Speaker 1: pioneer in volcanology too. Yeah. Absolutely, um yeah. They did
17:51
Speaker 1: eventually set up what they called a red zone, and
17:54
Speaker 1: a lot of people did evacuate. Uh, there were some
17:57
Speaker 1: notable people who didn't. Um. Certainly, we need to mention
18:01
Speaker 1: Harry Truman. Um obviously not the president, but he was
18:05
Speaker 1: this old kajer who ran the lodge there and he
18:09
Speaker 1: became a folk hero because he famously thumbed his nose
18:12
Speaker 1: and stayed and said, you know, I'm I'm a part
18:15
Speaker 1: of this place. It's a part of me. If the
18:17
Speaker 1: mountain goes, I'm gonna go with it. Art Carney played
18:21
Speaker 1: him in the movie version. He was He got a
18:24
Speaker 1: lot of media attention along with his sixteen cats. Um,
18:29
Speaker 1: which is the only part of the story. Like, hey man,
18:33
Speaker 1: I'm I'm all for people evacuating and keep people safe,
18:35
Speaker 1: but I'm also like some old old mountain man wants
18:40
Speaker 1: to stay up there and go go down with a volcano.
18:42
Speaker 1: Like that's his right, but send the cats away. Don't
18:46
Speaker 1: say like I'm gonna go down and kill these sixteen
18:49
Speaker 1: cats at the same time. Yeah, it's kind of like
18:52
Speaker 1: being buried in like you know, medieval times and having
18:55
Speaker 1: your live horse buried with you. Yeah. I just I
18:57
Speaker 1: don't know. Man. Once I heard about the cats, because
18:59
Speaker 1: I was all into the sky, right, and then I
19:01
Speaker 1: heard about the cat I was like, oh, dude, you
19:03
Speaker 1: should have at least set the cats away. Yeah, no way,
19:06
Speaker 1: not not a lodge cajure. So um, Harry Truman will
19:16
Speaker 1: come back in. This is Harry Ard Truman, by the way,
19:18
Speaker 1: everybody said his middle initial to differentiate him. He'll come
19:21
Speaker 1: back in later. But so this mark the last thing
19:24
Speaker 1: that we happened on the mountain. March in eight hours,
19:28
Speaker 1: there's twenty four four point or greater magnitude earthquakes, and
19:32
Speaker 1: that brought everybody running. Um. This whole thing was so
19:36
Speaker 1: perfectly planned that on the day of the eruption there
19:39
Speaker 1: was the mineral and gem show in Yakima, like I think,
19:44
Speaker 1: less than a hundred miles away from Mount St. Helen's,
19:47
Speaker 1: So anybody who has any had anything to do with
19:49
Speaker 1: geology just happened to be in the area or was
19:53
Speaker 1: purposefully in the area. And then on March that's just
19:57
Speaker 1: getting more and more and more. There was an actual eruption, right, yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: So this was I mean, compared to what eventually ended
20:05
Speaker 1: up happening, you could call this sort of many eruption.
20:08
Speaker 1: Even though it sent it made a big boom. Apparently
20:12
Speaker 1: it was a pretty cloudy day so it wasn't super visible,
20:15
Speaker 1: but the ash column went up sixty feet into the air,
20:19
Speaker 1: it's nothing to sneeze, and a new crater formed at
20:22
Speaker 1: the summit, which grew to about six hundred feet wide,
20:26
Speaker 1: so it was a major thing. There was another one
20:29
Speaker 1: on again throwing ash into the air, and this is
20:34
Speaker 1: like basically from that point through the big one in
20:38
Speaker 1: mid May, it was just constant uh warning, constant upheaval, mudslides, avalanches,
20:46
Speaker 1: craters growing, and like the mountain is saying like it's
20:50
Speaker 1: gonna happen people. This is not a false alarm until
20:54
Speaker 1: things calmed down, and that's what you were talking about earlier,
20:57
Speaker 1: Like things kind of settled down on what was that
21:00
Speaker 1: like May around around may to where the people got
21:06
Speaker 1: Auntie that were evacuated and said, hey, listen, we want
21:09
Speaker 1: to go back and check on our stuff. And the
21:11
Speaker 1: governor eventually was like, all right, I think it, you
21:14
Speaker 1: know at the time, and I think Washington still is
21:15
Speaker 1: a little bit of one of those like uh, not
21:18
Speaker 1: quite live free or die, but you know, like all right, listen,
21:21
Speaker 1: these people pay taxes, they want to go back to
21:23
Speaker 1: their homes, sign a waiver that you're not gonna sue us,
21:27
Speaker 1: and let him go back there. And that's what they did.
21:30
Speaker 1: They did. There's footage of them signing um waivers on
21:34
Speaker 1: the hood of a car with some obvious state lawyer
21:36
Speaker 1: in a three piece suit of canning people a pen
21:39
Speaker 1: being like signed here. It's really hilarious, but um they did.
21:43
Speaker 1: They started some people started to trickle in um and
21:46
Speaker 1: that's actually why there were you know, I think, and
21:50
Speaker 1: we ended up with fifty seven casualties. Seven people died,
21:55
Speaker 1: and that was one reason why it was actually that high.
21:58
Speaker 1: Could have could have been less, but bowl were allowed
22:00
Speaker 1: to trickle back in. They still kept like a perimeter,
22:04
Speaker 1: but I think it was kind of porous. If you
22:07
Speaker 1: wanted to get through, you could get through. And there
22:09
Speaker 1: are stories in that minute by minute episode of People.
22:13
Speaker 1: There's this one backpacker who is probably hilarious at parties
22:17
Speaker 1: because he makes like a funny a funny voice for
22:19
Speaker 1: the police when the police is talking, when he's recreating
22:22
Speaker 1: a conversation. Um, he's he's stuck through with friends. There
22:26
Speaker 1: are a lot of people on the mountain that otherwise
22:28
Speaker 1: might not have been had they kept it closed. But
22:30
Speaker 1: they did open it up a little bit, and it
22:32
Speaker 1: was because nothing had happened for a little while, and
22:35
Speaker 1: then about three days later everything happened. You said, you
22:39
Speaker 1: said S was getting real. This is when the S
22:41
Speaker 1: hit the fan. Yeah, well, I mean just prior to this,
22:46
Speaker 1: I guess let's let's back up one half second and
22:48
Speaker 1: let you know about what happened when David Johnson and
22:50
Speaker 1: Don Swanson, they had moved from their initial base at
22:54
Speaker 1: cold Water one, which was about I think eight or
22:58
Speaker 1: nine miles away. Uh, took their second station, which was
23:02
Speaker 1: called cold Water two, which is about five to six
23:05
Speaker 1: miles from the mountain. UM and notably it was on
23:08
Speaker 1: the northeast side of the mountain, which turned out to
23:11
Speaker 1: be the wrong spot to be UM. But you know,
23:13
Speaker 1: these guys knew what was going on. Uh. They know
23:16
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous job. And apparently they were swapping UM
23:20
Speaker 1: taking shifts. And Don Swanson got the call from Johnston
23:24
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, listen, I've got tonight and tomorrow
23:26
Speaker 1: if you come and relieve me the next day. And
23:29
Speaker 1: then on May eighteenth, nineteen eighty is when Johnston was
23:33
Speaker 1: there when everything went boom. Yeah, and I think there
23:36
Speaker 1: have been other colleagues and grad students and everything around
23:39
Speaker 1: cold Water too, and Johnston sent him away. He's like,
23:41
Speaker 1: this is outside the red zone, it's still potentially dangerous.
23:45
Speaker 1: There's no reason for more than just one of us
23:47
Speaker 1: to be here at a time, So you guys go.
23:49
Speaker 1: So at eight thirty two am on May eighteenth night,
23:53
Speaker 1: Mount St. Helen's like blew up. And there's like a
23:58
Speaker 1: typical idea that people have of a volcano going off,
24:02
Speaker 1: and most of the time it's shooting like a huge
24:05
Speaker 1: thing at ash and magma straight into the air from
24:08
Speaker 1: its top. But that is not what happened with Mount
24:11
Speaker 1: st Helens. Mount st Helens was a very specific and
24:15
Speaker 1: unusual type of eruption because it didn't go out of
24:18
Speaker 1: the top. It came out of the side, and it
24:21
Speaker 1: came out in what was known as a lateral blast eruption. Yeah,
24:26
Speaker 1: so you know, like we said earlier, that pressure is
24:28
Speaker 1: building up uh a lot under the surface. There's a
24:32
Speaker 1: lot of moisture down there. Some of it was um,
24:35
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, from that initial uh plate subduction. That's
24:38
Speaker 1: called magmatic water. Some of it is just regular groundwater
24:42
Speaker 1: from from rain and snow and everything. Because it is
24:44
Speaker 1: the mountains, that's called meteoric water. And all of that
24:48
Speaker 1: stuff is just heating up. It's got pressure from below
24:51
Speaker 1: because it's heating, It's got pressure from above because all
24:54
Speaker 1: of that weight of the rock is just pushing it down,
24:57
Speaker 1: and all of this magma is just like boiling under there.
25:01
Speaker 1: But and I don't know we talked about this before.
25:03
Speaker 1: I guess it was in one of the volcano episodes.
25:05
Speaker 1: But it's it's not allowed to turn to steam because
25:08
Speaker 1: there's no room for it. Like steam is expansive and
25:12
Speaker 1: it can't expand. So it's just this superheated beyond the
25:17
Speaker 1: boiling point level of liquid that's just distributed all throughout
25:22
Speaker 1: the upper half and notably sort of the north side
25:25
Speaker 1: of this mountain. Yeah, and that that created that bulge
25:28
Speaker 1: that kept growing by about six ft a day. UM.
25:31
Speaker 1: That was the bultree. It is because like it's as
25:35
Speaker 1: violent as it as you can imagine that a bulge,
25:38
Speaker 1: and it's something that can make a bulge on the
25:40
Speaker 1: side of the mountain would be. And so under under
25:43
Speaker 1: other circumstances a plenty in eruption where where volcano explodes
25:48
Speaker 1: out of the top, like you typically think of that
25:51
Speaker 1: pressure that magma is going to basically force the top
25:54
Speaker 1: of the mountain open and that's how it's going to explode.
25:59
Speaker 1: This is not what how been with Mount St Helen's
26:01
Speaker 1: that kind of UM. I guess the hump was on
26:04
Speaker 1: one side. It was on the north flank, wasn't it.
26:07
Speaker 1: So it was on the north flank, And the thing
26:09
Speaker 1: that kicked off Mount St Helen's eruption wasn't the volcano.
26:13
Speaker 1: It was actually an earthquake in the volcano, and that
26:17
Speaker 1: that that earthquake caused the largest landslide and recorded history
26:22
Speaker 1: on Earth. More than half of a square mile of
26:26
Speaker 1: Mount St. Helen's suddenly vanished away. It just suddenly dropped
26:31
Speaker 1: off the side, the north side of the mountain. Yeah,
26:34
Speaker 1: and it's um like, you should really go check out
26:36
Speaker 1: the footage of this stuff. It's some of the most
26:39
Speaker 1: amazing like natural geologic disaster footage I've ever seen, just
26:44
Speaker 1: to see this mountain and then that you know, especially
26:46
Speaker 1: in the Anything to see people interviewed, uh describing like
26:50
Speaker 1: seeing this with their eyeballs that was it was just
26:53
Speaker 1: like it was incomprehensible what they were witnessing, like a
26:56
Speaker 1: mountain that large and and part of it just going
27:00
Speaker 1: away immediately again. And one of the reasons they were
27:03
Speaker 1: able to witness it, and we have such great documentations
27:06
Speaker 1: because at eight thirty two am, a pair of geologists,
27:09
Speaker 1: husband and wife geologists, happened to be flying in a
27:12
Speaker 1: plane because they had hired a plane to go look
27:15
Speaker 1: at Mount St. Helen's because they'd heard that, you know,
27:17
Speaker 1: it was there's some stuff going on, and they happened
27:20
Speaker 1: to make one more pass right as the mountain that
27:23
Speaker 1: earthquake dropped the side of the mountain. They were like
27:26
Speaker 1: right above it in a plane. As a matter of fact,
27:28
Speaker 1: you know, what's where's your quote? Should we read that? Yeah,
27:31
Speaker 1: this is Dorothy Dorothy Stoffel Uh in twenty nineteen. She said,
27:35
Speaker 1: the whole north half of the mountain that we were
27:38
Speaker 1: flying just five feet above, began churning, and a mile
27:41
Speaker 1: long fracture shot across the mountain faster than our minds
27:45
Speaker 1: could absorb. The north half of the mountain just became
27:48
Speaker 1: like fluid and slid away. Amazing. I saw somebody else
27:52
Speaker 1: describe as like a zipper opening along the mountain. Yeah.
27:56
Speaker 1: And and you know there there were amateur photographers around
27:59
Speaker 1: for some of the stuff. Um, some of these hikers
28:01
Speaker 1: like that guy you mentioned that was telling the story
28:04
Speaker 1: and finding voices, UM and volcano chasers like they got
28:09
Speaker 1: some some like some One guy got like twenty two
28:12
Speaker 1: pictures in a row and this is when it eventually blew.
28:14
Speaker 1: The other guy got like six or eight pictures. Uh.
28:17
Speaker 1: There was a family uh camping with their two young
28:20
Speaker 1: daughters and that guy they were you know on the
28:24
Speaker 1: north side, Um, you know, well below it but uh,
28:27
Speaker 1: you know, within the range. And he was like, you know,
28:31
Speaker 1: speaking to how it didn't blow from the top, he said,
28:33
Speaker 1: it looked like somebody shot a shotgun out of the
28:35
Speaker 1: side of this mountain pointed at us. So ash ash
28:39
Speaker 1: was raining down, but it was raining like at people
28:42
Speaker 1: and less down from the sky right exactly. It wasn't
28:46
Speaker 1: going up and then coming back down. It was coming
28:48
Speaker 1: straight at you if you were anywhere north of the mountain. Yea.
28:51
Speaker 1: And the reason why the north of the mountain was
28:53
Speaker 1: so dangerous because that's where that hump had been. That's
28:56
Speaker 1: also where the earthquake moved a good portion of the mountain,
29:00
Speaker 1: which meant that all that pressure that was keeping that pressurized,
29:04
Speaker 1: superheated water from boiling under the mountain was suddenly exposed.
29:09
Speaker 1: It was that pressure was gone, and so all of
29:12
Speaker 1: that incredibly hot water flash heated into steam. And when
29:18
Speaker 1: that happens, that expands. Like you said, the reason that
29:20
Speaker 1: one of the reasons steam can't exist in that situation
29:24
Speaker 1: is because it's too expansive. When it does have the
29:28
Speaker 1: chance to expand, uh, it does so with incredible force.
29:33
Speaker 1: And that's what happened. That's why Mount Saint Helen's blew
29:36
Speaker 1: out the side rather than the top because there had
29:39
Speaker 1: been a weakening and the pressure that allowed all that
29:41
Speaker 1: to just blow out and blow out it did. Yeah,
29:45
Speaker 1: I mean it was um. If you look at it,
29:48
Speaker 1: it looks almost like a controlled demolition blast or something. Um.
29:53
Speaker 1: It definitely doesn't look like any kind of volcano blast
29:55
Speaker 1: that you might think of in your head. Um. It
29:57
Speaker 1: happened kind of all at once, and it was twenty
30:00
Speaker 1: four megaton blast, which I know everyone always tries to
30:05
Speaker 1: compare it to like Hiroshima. It was six hundred times
30:09
Speaker 1: as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Good lord, But
30:14
Speaker 1: I mean that's what it would take to move point
30:16
Speaker 1: six square or cubic miles of mountain all of a
30:20
Speaker 1: sudden too, you know, And that that blast chuck that
30:24
Speaker 1: that twenty four megaton blast. It was described as like
30:28
Speaker 1: a fast moving cloud of heat and stones moving at
30:33
Speaker 1: at some points pretty close to the mountain three hundred
30:36
Speaker 1: miles an hour, heated to like six hundred and sixty
30:39
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. I think that's like three degrees celsius, just
30:44
Speaker 1: blowing northward away from the mountain and everything within eight
30:49
Speaker 1: miles of that of the Mountain was in that blast zone,
30:54
Speaker 1: and if you recall correctly, David Johnston's um cold Water
30:59
Speaker 1: to camp was within about five miles. Yeah, he obviously
31:04
Speaker 1: didn't make it. Uh, they found I think they found
31:07
Speaker 1: pieces of his trailer like a decade later. H he
31:10
Speaker 1: had time to send out one signal which was over
31:13
Speaker 1: his radio Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it. The only person
31:18
Speaker 1: to pick that up was a Ham radio operator nearby,
31:22
Speaker 1: and they renamed that Arie Johnston Ridge in his honor. Um. Obviously,
31:27
Speaker 1: Harry Truman perished along with those sixteen cats, and he
31:31
Speaker 1: was close enough, uh to where I saw that. They
31:34
Speaker 1: said that he and everything around him was basically instantly vaporized,
31:40
Speaker 1: Like he wouldn't have felt anything. It would have happened
31:43
Speaker 1: his death and vaporization would have happened in like less
31:46
Speaker 1: than a second. Yeah, I have the impression the same
31:49
Speaker 1: thing happened to David Johnston. And also that rad that
31:52
Speaker 1: Ham radio operator who was volunteering to kind of document it.
31:56
Speaker 1: He documented David Johnston. Um get covered up, he said,
32:01
Speaker 1: Um the he said, gentleman, the camper in the car
32:05
Speaker 1: that's sitting over to the south of me. He was
32:07
Speaker 1: talking about David Johnston is covered is going to hit
32:10
Speaker 1: me too. And that was Jerry Martin, that Ham radio operator,
32:13
Speaker 1: and that was his last transmission. He was vaporized as well.
32:17
Speaker 1: Essentially everything everything north of the mountain within eight miles
32:22
Speaker 1: was just destroyed, just destroyed, like entire hundred foot trees
32:28
Speaker 1: that were like ten twelve feet in diameter, just completely
32:32
Speaker 1: flattened and also denuded of any bark on the way
32:35
Speaker 1: as well. UM. And this was just a blast that UM.
32:40
Speaker 1: The landslide that was created from that, the the earthquake
32:44
Speaker 1: that initially triggered the eruption UM that had in some
32:48
Speaker 1: incredible effects as well. Yeah, because what you've got, you know,
32:51
Speaker 1: beyond this avalanche happening, is you've got all of a sudden,
32:54
Speaker 1: all this heat happens in a place where there's a
32:56
Speaker 1: lot of snow, so that snow melts, that glacier ice melts,
33:01
Speaker 1: and you have flooding, and you have mud slides, and
33:05
Speaker 1: you have a word that I had never even heard
33:07
Speaker 1: of before Ed included it in here, which was lahar,
33:11
Speaker 1: which sounds like just a mud slide on steroids, like
33:14
Speaker 1: a mudside carrying ammunition with it. And this is just
33:19
Speaker 1: raining down everywhere and and like causing a path of
33:23
Speaker 1: destruction that hasn't been seen in like modern times in
33:26
Speaker 1: this country. Yeah, it was like it had so much
33:28
Speaker 1: power chuck that that that slide did that one part
33:32
Speaker 1: of it was carrying chunks of rock as big as
33:35
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty eight feet or seven hundred and
33:38
Speaker 1: seventy across. That's as big as a fifty story building.
33:43
Speaker 1: It was moving rocks that size just fast as you
33:46
Speaker 1: can imagine, down the mountain into the valleys. And I
33:49
Speaker 1: saw it described as if you were watching it from
33:52
Speaker 1: a ridge, as some people were, like far away, you
33:55
Speaker 1: would see the cloud or the debris starting to come
33:59
Speaker 1: at you. It would disappear into a valley, and then
34:02
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it would come up over the
34:03
Speaker 1: ridge and keep keep going. It would. It was just
34:06
Speaker 1: filling valleys with rocks and debris. It's just it's it's
34:10
Speaker 1: unimaginable trying to grasp what happened. And it's even crazier
34:16
Speaker 1: that some people are actually they're watching this happen crazy.
34:20
Speaker 1: It is crazy. You want to take a break, Yeah,
34:24
Speaker 1: we'll take a break and talk a little bit more
34:25
Speaker 1: about the after effects right after this. Okay, we're back,
34:54
Speaker 1: and as Chuck promised everyone, it's after effect time. Well,
34:58
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about it. Um. Obviously, Spirit Lake,
35:01
Speaker 1: which we mentioned at the beginning, which was at the
35:03
Speaker 1: base of the mountain UM, has a very strange effects
35:08
Speaker 1: on bodies of water. It Uh, it did two things.
35:10
Speaker 1: It made the lake larger, but it also made it shallower,
35:14
Speaker 1: because it just flooded all this water down there and
35:18
Speaker 1: raised it such that the outlet was basically dammed up,
35:21
Speaker 1: and so the lake got a whole lot bigger, but
35:23
Speaker 1: it reduced its depth by about eight feet. Um. I
35:26
Speaker 1: think five years later they built a spillway tunnel to
35:30
Speaker 1: control the depth of the lake. Um. Two hundred homes
35:33
Speaker 1: and cabins and about two hundred miles of road and
35:37
Speaker 1: railways were completely obliterated. Yeah. I also saw that lake
35:42
Speaker 1: was now two hundred feet higher in elevation than it
35:45
Speaker 1: had been before, as if like there was so much debris.
35:49
Speaker 1: It like raised the lake two hundred feet even though
35:52
Speaker 1: it also made it shallower. It's nuts, And I think
35:54
Speaker 1: it lowered the ultimate height of Mount Saint Helen's right. Yeah, Um,
35:58
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I think by like six meters or
36:02
Speaker 1: something like that. Some ridiculous amount of height just blown off.
36:06
Speaker 1: And that was another thing too, like the after effects
36:09
Speaker 1: of it um if you look at Mount St. Helen's
36:12
Speaker 1: today or especially like right afterward, UM, it was turned
36:15
Speaker 1: into like an amphitheater, Like the north side was blown
36:18
Speaker 1: out and the other sides were kind of curved around
36:21
Speaker 1: and what was neat is one of the huge after
36:23
Speaker 1: effects of Mount St. Helen's. One of the more positive
36:25
Speaker 1: ones is I saw it described as like a crash
36:28
Speaker 1: course um for vulcanologists and seismologists and everybody who are
36:32
Speaker 1: now just had this amazing natural laboratory to study in.
36:37
Speaker 1: And that the eruption, because it was the lateral blast,
36:40
Speaker 1: opened up like basically a cross section of the mountain
36:44
Speaker 1: that they could study. Now it's it's past history from
36:47
Speaker 1: the inside out, which I thought was pretty neat. And
36:50
Speaker 1: a young Trey Anastasia said, one day I shall play
36:53
Speaker 1: at the base of that amphitheater and bore people with noodling.
36:59
Speaker 1: They they there, No, I don't think so. I don't
37:02
Speaker 1: think there's anything there. How was this kidding? Oh wow,
37:04
Speaker 1: that was just completely made. I never will miss a
37:07
Speaker 1: chance to take a ticket fish with you. Uh so,
37:12
Speaker 1: ash is raining down and out. Uh, it literally darkened
37:16
Speaker 1: the skies. Um. When this ash, if you were close
37:19
Speaker 1: enough to it, it would literally burn you alive. Um.
37:23
Speaker 1: If you're far away, it can just create a lot
37:25
Speaker 1: of problems everything from uh, you know, just equipment not working,
37:29
Speaker 1: electrical outages and blackouts and brown outs. Visibility is obviously terrible. Um.
37:36
Speaker 1: As far as crops go, certain crops were wiped out
37:39
Speaker 1: by this ash and the toxic gases. Some of them
37:43
Speaker 1: did a little bit better because they just got a
37:45
Speaker 1: little bit of the ash and it um ash will
37:47
Speaker 1: help promote rainfall and hold moisture in the ground better.
37:51
Speaker 1: So apparently wheat crops and apple crops fared pretty well. Yeah,
37:55
Speaker 1: that was surprising. Yeah. I also saw and there was
37:58
Speaker 1: a lot of devastation. Any any big game animal in
38:01
Speaker 1: the blast zone. Was I said, big game animal by
38:04
Speaker 1: the way, was it was in the blast zone? Was
38:08
Speaker 1: was killed without question, But they were They were very surprised.
38:11
Speaker 1: Biologists who went in to investigate shortly afterward found they
38:15
Speaker 1: were like entire communities and ecosystems of smaller animals and
38:19
Speaker 1: plants and microbes. Fun. Guy that had survived just fine.
38:23
Speaker 1: And we're among the first to recallonize and we're part
38:26
Speaker 1: of the reason why um Mount St. Helen's ecosystem started
38:31
Speaker 1: to rebound so quickly. I mean, that's what will happen,
38:34
Speaker 1: right if if if the Earth ever just burns up
38:37
Speaker 1: into a fiery ball, that'll just become a big mushroom field,
38:40
Speaker 1: right probably, and then the animals that lived underground will
38:44
Speaker 1: come above ground and say it's our time, baby, I
38:47
Speaker 1: look forward to for some um what else happened? Oh?
38:52
Speaker 1: I saw that the ash cloud that that um that
38:56
Speaker 1: blew finally out of the top. We should say that
38:58
Speaker 1: the lateral blast was followed by a plenty in blast
39:02
Speaker 1: and that shot, like you know, that was the money
39:05
Speaker 1: volcano shot that everybody was looking for. A plume of
39:08
Speaker 1: ash and smoke rose eighty thousand feet into the air,
39:12
Speaker 1: and it was moving so fast that it circled the
39:14
Speaker 1: globe in fifteen days, came back to square one in
39:17
Speaker 1: fifteen days. And of course that was like affecting air traffic.
39:21
Speaker 1: Do you remember the icelandic Uh volcano that affected air
39:25
Speaker 1: traffic in Europe for like weeks. Weren't you stranded by
39:28
Speaker 1: that or something? Okay? Okay? Um it like they knew
39:34
Speaker 1: what to do in part because of how Mount St.
39:38
Speaker 1: Helen's affected air travel. At the time, they were like,
39:40
Speaker 1: this is brand new to us, um, but it helped
39:44
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for understanding what to look for how
39:46
Speaker 1: to deal with that kind of stuff later on. Yeah,
39:49
Speaker 1: the um. The other thing I wanted to point out
39:51
Speaker 1: to about Spirit Lake was if you look at footage
39:54
Speaker 1: of the lake and now these kind of rivers that
39:57
Speaker 1: were just happening, and it literally like re out it
40:00
Speaker 1: you know, the Columbia River and the Cowlitz River in sections, um,
40:05
Speaker 1: but it looks like it looks like a logging operation
40:08
Speaker 1: is happening, um, and like you could almost and may
40:11
Speaker 1: have been able. Well obviously it has been too dangerous,
40:14
Speaker 1: but it looks like you could have walked over these logs.
40:17
Speaker 1: They were so like packed and these were just trees
40:20
Speaker 1: you know, an hour before. Yeah, if you could do
40:23
Speaker 1: that lumberjack log rolling thing, you could have probably made
40:27
Speaker 1: it across the lake. But there in that minute by
40:30
Speaker 1: minute episode, there was a pair of like high school
40:33
Speaker 1: sweethearts who have been camping and they had a harrowing
40:36
Speaker 1: experience because they they both got thrown into Spirit Lake,
40:40
Speaker 1: and um, the boyfriend was able to rescue the girlfriend.
40:44
Speaker 1: Is like the logs were starting to close in on him.
40:46
Speaker 1: He pulled her out from the lake and they were
40:48
Speaker 1: hanging onto logs when they finally made it out and
40:51
Speaker 1: were rescued. That happened like that happened to somebody. They
40:56
Speaker 1: were in their car. Oh is that how? And that's
40:58
Speaker 1: how they got in the lake. They were in their car. Yeah,
41:00
Speaker 1: they said it just picked him up and all that
41:02
Speaker 1: they were driving and then they were floating and they
41:05
Speaker 1: said that there you know there she said, like my
41:07
Speaker 1: instinct was to get out of the car, but there
41:08
Speaker 1: was like nowhere to go, right yeah, because there were
41:11
Speaker 1: trees everywhere floating around beside him, right yeah. And this
41:15
Speaker 1: is you know, these are just sort of That's what
41:17
Speaker 1: was so cool about the special is it really brought
41:19
Speaker 1: in the human element of these people that were around there.
41:22
Speaker 1: Um and they you know, they all survived because they
41:25
Speaker 1: were being interviewed obviously UM Dorothy Stoffel, who was the
41:30
Speaker 1: the geologist that was flying with UM. I guess it
41:33
Speaker 1: was her husband, Keith. Was that her brother her her
41:36
Speaker 1: husband Keith? Okay, Um they survived that plane flight, like
41:40
Speaker 1: they got out of there. There were stories of people
41:43
Speaker 1: that literally it was like from a movie. Drove, you know,
41:47
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten miles an hour, like out running
41:50
Speaker 1: this ash debris slide coming at right. Yeah, and some
41:55
Speaker 1: people didn't make it. So there was one guy who
41:57
Speaker 1: was chronicled in that that was driving as fast as
42:00
Speaker 1: you can in the blasts just caught up with him
42:04
Speaker 1: and buried him um in the in the ash um
42:08
Speaker 1: and he probably died pretty much instantly. But like again,
42:11
Speaker 1: that happened to people. There's very famous footage of a
42:14
Speaker 1: house just flowing down like a newly engorged mud slide
42:20
Speaker 1: e river moving so fast that you probably could have
42:23
Speaker 1: towed water skiers from the house. Essentially it was moving
42:26
Speaker 1: that fast just down the river. So I mean again,
42:29
Speaker 1: it was one of the most documented um volcanic eruptions
42:34
Speaker 1: of all times. So there's really amazing footage on there
42:37
Speaker 1: or just on the internet, is what I mean. Um,
42:39
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the last time that that Mount St.
42:42
Speaker 1: Helen's has erupted. I think it erupted a few times
42:46
Speaker 1: between nineteen eighty and maybe I think, yeah, and then
42:52
Speaker 1: the biggest one recently was between two thousand four and
42:55
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Yeah, it started sort of getting a
42:58
Speaker 1: little more active again. Uh this time though, you know,
43:02
Speaker 1: one of the things that um to the benefit of
43:05
Speaker 1: the surrounding area when a volcano blows like that is
43:07
Speaker 1: that pressure is released and it's gonna take a long
43:11
Speaker 1: time to build back up to that level again kind
43:13
Speaker 1: of depending on what how it reforms on top of it.
43:17
Speaker 1: But this time apparently there are, uh, there are more
43:20
Speaker 1: ways for this pressure to be released. So I think
43:23
Speaker 1: it's just sort of the pressure is being released a
43:26
Speaker 1: little more gradually since the two thousand foursion too. But
43:30
Speaker 1: there they do say that like, oh no, like it
43:33
Speaker 1: will happen again, like things are uh, there is a
43:37
Speaker 1: new lava dome growing and the pressure is going to
43:40
Speaker 1: build up, and it could be in a thousand years
43:43
Speaker 1: or it could be in ten years. Yeah, we just
43:46
Speaker 1: don't know now, but they are studying it. Like there
43:48
Speaker 1: there's a lot of active research and study going on
43:52
Speaker 1: at Mount Saint Helen's now. Yeah, I believe, you know,
43:54
Speaker 1: the eruption was such a big deal that they've they've
43:56
Speaker 1: opened the U s g S opened a research station
43:59
Speaker 1: nearby UM and also that that two thousand four activity
44:05
Speaker 1: basically ran from two thousand four to two eight. Like
44:07
Speaker 1: you said, they've been studying the mountain closely. So there's
44:10
Speaker 1: amazing time laps footage of those four years, and it's
44:15
Speaker 1: astounding how fast and how big Mount St. Helen's just
44:19
Speaker 1: grows from that eruption activity. It's called time laps Images
44:23
Speaker 1: of Mount St Helen's um dome growth. It's on YouTube, UM,
44:29
Speaker 1: and I recommend checking that out as well. Yeah, I
44:32
Speaker 1: would just be careful when you google dome growth or
44:37
Speaker 1: bulge growth. Boy. So, man, we are so juvenile sometimes,
44:42
Speaker 1: aren't we? And by we I mean me too. Um.
44:47
Speaker 1: But like we said, Mount St Helens bounced back, Spirit
44:50
Speaker 1: Lake open back up and the cold Water two station
44:52
Speaker 1: has been renamed after David Johnston and there's an amazing
44:56
Speaker 1: memorial too. I saw on some trip Advisor posts that
44:58
Speaker 1: somebody so I was like, the one of the best, um,
45:02
Speaker 1: like not welcome center, but you know, information centers that
45:05
Speaker 1: the person's ever been to. So I would like to
45:08
Speaker 1: go there. Some cookies are en real? All right? You
45:12
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else? All right, We'll
45:15
Speaker 1: go forth and research um Mount St Helen's with an
45:19
Speaker 1: s UM. And you can start doing that by watching
45:22
Speaker 1: Dante's Peak. Since I said Dante's peak, it's time for
45:26
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is following up on an email that
45:30
Speaker 1: you particularly liked from our speectacular. Okay, hey, guys, thoroughly
45:34
Speaker 1: enjoying the most recent spectacular. The accents are comedy genius.
45:38
Speaker 1: Uh Meagle, do you want to pop in and say Hi, Hello, perfect?
45:45
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring Megle back every now and then. By
45:47
Speaker 1: the way, I just want to prepare you in the audience.
45:50
Speaker 1: I wanted to address a couple of eighteen hundreds diction
45:52
Speaker 1: issues that call some puzzlement. Uh. When you got talked
45:55
Speaker 1: about toilet it's basically what Josh said. I've always thought
45:58
Speaker 1: of it as a refreshing as freshening up in the bathroom,
46:01
Speaker 1: washing your face and hands when first waking up, or
46:03
Speaker 1: going to bed. A double check with Marion Webster, though,
46:06
Speaker 1: and it's more generally dressing and grooming. That makes sense. Yeah. Sure.
46:12
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the strangers in the beverage from
46:15
Speaker 1: the toll House is a lot more puzzling. I had
46:18
Speaker 1: no idea what it meant, And although Josh's guests that
46:20
Speaker 1: beverage meant the pub was clever, it doesn't really make
46:23
Speaker 1: sense just as a reminder of the sentence is talking
46:26
Speaker 1: about some men drinking tea in an end and pausing
46:29
Speaker 1: to quote discover the sex and dates of arrival of
46:33
Speaker 1: the strangers, which floated in some numbers in the beverage
46:37
Speaker 1: end quote. I think I found the answer, though, guys,
46:40
Speaker 1: in a Dictionary of Scottish dialect, we love this stuff
46:43
Speaker 1: by them, this is amazing. Tea leaves floating on the
46:46
Speaker 1: surface of your drink are considered omens that you will
46:48
Speaker 1: meet someone new, So these tea leaves are called strangers.
46:52
Speaker 1: If you pick up a stranger and bite it, the
46:54
Speaker 1: toughness will tell you whether the new acquaintance will be
46:57
Speaker 1: male or female. Amazing. I'm gonna guess there's also a
47:01
Speaker 1: way to predict the date you meet this person, although
47:03
Speaker 1: I didn't see reference to that. So that's what the
47:05
Speaker 1: characters are doing, guys, using tea leaves to predict the future.
47:09
Speaker 1: By the way, other omens can also be strangers, like
47:11
Speaker 1: unburned candlewicks or sit on greats. I've loved the show
47:14
Speaker 1: for years, look forward to anymore. That is a great email.
47:18
Speaker 1: Nat Jacob's fantastic uh sleuthing and we are super grateful.
47:24
Speaker 1: Top to bottom start to finish. Wonderful email. Also just
47:27
Speaker 1: put so nicely to not like you big dummies. Yeah,
47:31
Speaker 1: because I got it pretty wrong. It was a terrible guess,
47:35
Speaker 1: but I mean that was really hard. Like you was obscure,
47:39
Speaker 1: you know very much? Anyway, I love knowing that now.
47:42
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite emails. So thanks a lot, Nat.
47:44
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Nat and get
47:46
Speaker 1: in touch with us in the best way possible, you
47:48
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart
47:51
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
47:58
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio from our podcasts My heart Radio,
48:01
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
48:04
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm