42 years ago, around 8:30 am PDT on Sunday, 18 May 1980, decapitating the mountain in an enormous landslide. Large emissions of ash, pyroclastic flows and debris flows flattened surrounding forests, destroyed roads and bridges, and killed 57 people.
USGS file photo.
Personally, I was in graduate school at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, and grateful that I wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest at the time, or for many months afterwards.