The night before the eruption at Central Washington University, we bought a keg of beer for the next morning’s “Hardcore Party.” This is when all or most of the students in the dorm come to a room at 7 a.m. dressed in nightgowns, PJ’s, robes, whatever and have a few drinks on a Sunday morning. This was held on that day, Sunday May 18th, in my room with about 25 people attending.
After the activities, a buddy of mine, Brian, and I went for a walk across campus heading west toward the science building. Ellensburg, where the university is located, is reknown for is windy days. But on this day, there was none. Brian noticed this, and also mentioned that there were no noises from any birds. Then he went into a glazed stare to the west. I thought the beer had gotten the best of him. When I turned to looked at what he was focused on, I, too, was in shock!
The Cascade Range is just to the west of the campus, and all we could see coming over the crest of the mountain range was black, billowing clouds. It started in a spot and was ever increasingly getting wider and larger as the seconds passed. In minutes, the entire mountain range was covered. At first, we thought it was a forest fire, but it increased too quickly for that, and we decided to head back to the dorm across campus. While walking back, students were yelling out their dorm windows that “Mount St. Helens has just erupted!”
When we returned to the dorm, the ash started falling and didn’t stop for days. We had 2 feet of ash by noon. It was dark as night, and all the street lights were on. We were all out taking pictures, and some students were collecting samples. We had picture of us shaking trees and having the ash come down like thick snow on us.
