On May 18th 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted, causing the deaths of 57 people.

One of them was a close friend of my dad's, a National Geographic photographer named Reid Blackburn, who's car was caught in the eruption (the mountain was not expected to erupt for another couple of weeks).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Blackburn

I was named after my dad's friend, and I often wish I was able to meet him (I was not born for another 6 years).

Anyone here wish to share their experiences, where they were when the eruption happened, or maybe friends/acquaintances who were killed/affected by the eruption?

I was in the Backseat of a 1968 Cadillac Eldorado at the intersection of Maple valley Hwy and Sunset in Renton.
The cloud was dead ahead...very ominous.

I was 6. I still remember the ash falling from the sky. I also remember stopping with my dad along one of the country roads seeing an ash plume, but I don't recall if it was the big one or a smaller one later.

I was 6 as well. I was playing outside in my neighborhood, we lived in Tumwater at the time. I remember how dark it got when the ash started coming down and how buried everything got. A very memorable experience for sure.

My grandparents lived over in the Palouse area at the time that it happened. Mind you that's nearly on the far east edge of the state. My grandma still heard the boom, as it was so large that it managed to bounce off the atmosphere.

There are still photos in the general store in the town she lived in, of the ash fall in town, several inches thick like snow. When I used to go over and visit her place as a kid, there was still a layer of ash everywhere well into the 1990s all around much of that area of the state, and if you scooped some soil out of the dirt you always got a nice mix of fine grey ash in your hand.

There were a lot of roads in eastern WA where you could see the ash deposits along the sides of the roads for years. I rarely see it any more.

I was 9 and we lived down in Portland at the time. I remember the ash falling from the sky like a light snowfall, and watching the news coverage with my dad.

Still have a small jar of the ash around here somewhere...

Here are a few pictures. I i might need to make 2 posts to get them all in.

i was 16 days old

A few more

And a couple more

I was in 2nd grade and my school was camping near the base of the mountain. I can still picture the clouds as they swirled from white to grey to black. It went pitch black in a matter of minutes and we all jumped in the parents cars. Took us eleven long scary hours to get back to Seattle. Can still remember most of that trip.

Was not quite 3. Don't remember much, but my dad was moving equipment for Weyco in that area and for a few minutes I guess mom was pretty shook up until he called from Morton.

My only very fragmented memory of the eruption is sitting with my father on the hardwood floor in our front living room, watching who I now know was Jeff Renner and footage of dead deer floating down the Toulouse River. That's it.

I was 14 years old watching TV downstairs in my parents family room in University Place. It felt like someone grabbed the house and shook it for a second.
My mom furriously yelled down to me asking what I was doing (I was a rambunctious teen who took a fascination with home made improvised fireworks at the time).
I told her I was just watching TV and wasn't doing anything!

I remember seeing the breaking news, then heading outside to see the darkened sky to the South.

We didn't get much ash fall, IIRC, but I do still have a small mayo jar of the ash from when we went down to the area some time later. My folks have pictures of my sister and me standing at the base of a tree with the mud flow line a good 20' above our heads.