Mount St. Helens Research Paper

Of the volcanoes that are located in the United States there are two which are world renowned for their activity and their power to change the region surrounding them. The two volcanoes would be Mount Saint Helens and Mount Kilauea. In order to get a better understanding of these volcanoes we will be comparing and contrasting them as well as talking about how they were formed and when they last had an eruption.

Volcanos are deadly, can form on islands or mainland, and can destroy mountains and cities. Volcanos commonly form from holes in the earth containing magma. When pressure builds up in these magma chambers, they explode resulting in magma and rock catapulting out into the air. As these volcanoes repeatedly explode, they leak magma, which runs down the side of the volcano. Eventually, the lava cools and transforms into solid rock, building up the volcano to mountain size. An example of giant volcanic eruptions is the Pompeii disaster in 79AD, when Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed all of Pompeii. Another example includes, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, which destroyed the whole mountain. Volcanos

The side of mt st Helens has been blown off by the force of the blast and trees have been demolished buy the rocks crashing at them

Volcanoes are one of the most destructive, yet, most beautiful things on Earth. They can make a famous city choke in its own ashes in one day, like Pompeii. Or they can turn a once damaging mountain into a graceful and peaceful home for new life, like Mount St. Helen’s. All volcanoes are unique, and no two are the same. Some erupt differently than others, some look different than others, and all are located in different spots all over the world. I learned this while completing the project and the five volcanoes I researched are examples of my discoveries. The five volcanoes I researched were Mount Hood, Mount Mageik, Long Island, Mount Muria, and Las Pilas.

The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as

lives were ended as a result of this unnatural disaster, most of them civilian. The people

It was May 18th, 1980. The eruption of Mount St. Helens occurred in Washington,United States. The exact time it had happened is at 8:32:17. The eruption happened 96 miles out South of Seattle, Washington and 50 miles northeast of Portland,Oregon. Many people died during this time. About 50 people had died. 250 homes were destroyed. Along with 47 bridges, 15 miles of railways, 185 miles of highway was also destroyed. Many tiny earthquakes had happened a couple days before the eruption had happened.

“The heat of the fire and the great masses of flaming gas created great whirlwinds which mowed down swaths of trees in advance of the flames” (Koch, 1978). Women and children gathered the belongings they could and piled into Trains in seek of safety from the fire while the men were told to report to battle. Multiple towns were incinerated by the morning of the next day. The two day long fire had burned a total of 3 million acres of Idaho and Montana and took the lives of 85 people along with countless animals unable to outrun the burning fire. The smoke from the fires reached New England and soot traveled to Greenland (Forest History Society,

On May 18th, 1980 one of the worst volcanic eruptions occurred in the United States. Triggered by an earthquake, Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington State at 8:39am. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it was "the deadliest and most economically destructive event in the history of the United States." There were many effects from this terrible, natural event. People, animals, and the environment were all effected.

On August 21, 1910, at four pm, a massive wild fire broke out. This Great Fire of 1910, also known as the Big Blowup, spread from Wallace, Idaho to western Montana and into a small amount of Washington. The Great Fire of 1910 lasted for two days and spread because of hurricane winds that shot trees up like flying torpedos ( Quinn ). The cause of the fire was from leftover timber that was heated up from the sparks of the railroad nearby. The timber was from campers, loggers, and homesteaders. The wild fire destroyed over three million acres of forest. Also, 1910 was the driest year and Idaho didn’t get rain since May ( Jamison ). One of the lead firefighters saved all but six of his men while finding safety in an

Mount St Helens erupted on the 18th May 1980 at 9am and is an active strata volcano Washington State USA, a MEDC. Where as on 18th July 1995, during the daytime, Montserrat, a LEDC during the day, Montserrat's Soufrière Hills composite volcano of a height 1050m, meaning sulphur hills, dormant for centuries, erupted and produced a phreatic eruption. The volcano is a strata volcano also. Mount St. Helens is a composite volcano which lies near to a destructive plate boundary where the small Juan de Fuca Plate is being subducted underneath the North American Plate where as the eruption

Mount St. Helen is a very active volcano classified as a stratovolcano, stratovolcano is basically a tall volcano built up of layer after layer of hard lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Mount St. Helens location is in Skamania County in Washington, with coordinates of 46 12'00.17"N122 11'21.13"W. Mount St Helen is famous because of its catastrophic eruption on May eighteenth in nineteen eighty. The eruption measured a five on the volcanic explosivity index. This is an index created by Chris Newell and Steven Self in the year nineteen eighty-two it was designed to try and measure the explosiveness of volcano eruptions to determine the value of the explosivity and qualitative observations ranging from zero to eight, eight being the

May 18, 1980 was a day that dawned sunny and beautiful. Mt. St. Helens stood out beautifully against the blue sky. The mountain had been rumbling quite a bit the past few days, and geologists were watching it carefully and monitoring vibrations. There had been a series of earthquakes from around March 12, up until present day. Over 170 earthquakes hit that were higher that 2.5 on the Richter scale in that short period of time. The earth shook with an earthquake that hit 5.0 on the Richter scale, at around 8:32 in the morning. That did it. Mount St. Helens blew apart with the force of over 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. The lateral blast traveled at over 300 miles an hour, and destroyed 230 square miles of forest in just 3 minutes.

Mount St. Helens Location: Washington, United States Latitude: 46.20 N Longitude: 122.18 W height: 2,549 meters or 8,364 feet - 9,677 feet before May 18, 1980 Type: Stratovolcano Number of eruptions in past 200 years: 2-3 Latest Eruptions: Between 1660-1700, around 1800-1802, 1831, 1835, 1842-1844, 1847-1854, 1857, 1980-? Present thermal activity: strong steaming Nickname: Mount Fuji of the West Remarks: continuous intermittent activity since 1980 with occasional eruptions of steam and ash; occasional pyroclastic flows; intermittent dome forming. MSH is considered a young volcano that developed over the last 40,000 years and is one of the most active volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Geologists predicted that the

I woke up at four a.m., showered, changed, brushed my teeth, combed my hair and drove to work, but that’s when the fundamentals of the world changed. Earth practically quivered with the anticipation of the future for the world. That day, the world was thrown out of balance. The volcano under Yellowstone park exploded forever changing the world as we knew it. The volcano wasn’t expected to erupt for centuries, yet it still exploded. Millions of people died from just the ash alone. Families trapped in buildings and killed as the roof caved in, crushing them to death. Others separated from their other loved ones, unable to contact them and know if they were alive. During that crisis, here I am driving to work, unaware of the calamity