Regis University Science Travel Journal: Mount Saint Helens Week 4

Friday, November 16, 2018

Mount Saint Helens Week 4 - Donovan Olson

Mount St. Helens one of the most commonly known volcanos in the United States, in my own opinion. Geographically speaking, Mount St. Helens is in the Portland area of Washington State. That said, it also is planted between the Juan de Fuca plate and the North American plates. Geologist has concluded that the creation of this mountain was due the Juan de Fuca plate began moving underneath the North American plate. I found it interesting that the movement of plates within the earth created a vicious range of volcanos. Those plates lay within the “ring of fire” section of the world that gets its name from being not only volcanic but also has tendencies for earth quacks. A picture of the ring of fire can be seen in this post.

One of its most known eruptions was May 18, 1980. This was no doubt an explosive type eruption as earth quack levels reached a 5.1 on the Richter scale. Mt. Saint Helens is known as a composite volcano meaning that it was formed from dense chemicals. Luckily, this particular eruption did not expel any lava, the actual height of the blast reached almost 80,000 feet into the air (with some simple math that’s almost 15 miles into the air!). Not only did the state of Washington get to experience this blast, but also 11 other states reported having ash in their state.

Not only was the ash an issue, but also the landside it triggered. Everything in its path was completely destroyed as the flow raced down at speeds of 300 mph and temperatures over 500 degrees. This explosion was later found to destroy over 250 houses,18 miles of highway roads, and nearly 4 billion trees torn down to the ground. The estimated damages estimated were 1 billion dollars which would be over 3 billion dollars today. This eruption not only caused a significant amount of damage financially speaking but also took the lives of 57 people.

Seeing as how Mt. Saint Helens is considered an active volcano, it is very likely that it will erupt again. From what I was able to gather it was found that this should occur every 100-300 years.