Mount St. Helens ERUPTS!
Time of Eruption: 12:03PM PDT
Lasted: 24 minutes
Described as "beautiful and breathtaking" by observers.
Light dusting of ash seen on cars in local towns. Geologists call this a cold ash eruption with no magma.
From The Seattle PI:
MOUNT ST. HELENS, Wash. -- Mount St. Helens belched a roiling plume of white steam and ash Friday, more than a week after a flurry of earthquakes first warned an eruption was on the way."This is exactly the kind of event we've been predicting," said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Cynthia Gardner.
Steam frequently rises from a lava dome in the crater of the volcano, which erupted with devastating force and killed 57 people on May 18, 1980. But there had been no eruptions in 18 years.
A few minutes after noon, the steam and ash cloud poured from the southern edge of a nearly 1,000-foot-tall lava dome in the volcano's crater, where a large section of glacier had fractured and risen as much as 11 yards since Thursday afternoon. After about 20 minutes, the mountain calmed and the plume quickly dissipated, heading south-southwest.
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