May 2015 – EUGENE, Ore. – Mount St. Helens caught science a little by surprise. A volcano hadn’t erupted on the United State mainland outside Alaska and Hawaii since California’s Lassen Peak in early 20th Century. And modern science had yet to witness an eruption quite like St. Helens. “I think this was a turning point in the way people approached these kinds of potentially active, explosive volcanoes,” said Mike Dungan, a volcanologist with an office at the University of Oregon. St. Helens didn’t just erupt: it blew up. The force of the May 18, 1980, eruption wasn’t just vertical; it was lateral, sending a side of the mountain rocketing down slope as a wall of boiling mud and rock. The eruption killed 57 people – and put scientists and policy makers on notice.
“It’s only a matter of a short time – decades or something – before another…
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