May 18 1980

DeerMadness

Long Time Member
Messages
5,352
I was 90 miles away as the Crow flies. I wondered what were those rolling black clouds that were headed to the Tri-Cities where I lived then. The ash that fell on my 69 Lemans was not powdery but more like sanding grit. My Ex who I met 4 months later was living in Yakima. They got inches and it ruined her engine. I had to rebuild it later after we met.
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I was living in Spokane and remember watching the black cloud head over all of eastern Washington. We got about 3-4 inches at my house, and it was absolute hell on any engine / equipment.
Bill
 
I remember seeing about this in the news for a couple weeks. Fascinating and scary.

Rewatched a documentary on it about 3 months ago.
 
I hired a guide in 1984 to take 2 trips- Whitewater Raft trip on the Little White Salmon and a Sturgeon trip on the Columbia above the Bonneville Dam.
He was on the Toutle guiding when St Helen's sent Mud Flows raging down and nearly lost his life and the clients life. His boat and all the gear were lost though.
It could have been much worse but gave way in a lesser manner than could have happened.
I caught six Sturgeon that day in June 1984. Two keepers - a 46" and a 49". No huge fish and tbr others were a little over 3' which could have even kept.
He had a Wolf/Malemute dog that weighed over 200 lbs. It had been someone else's dog and had been shot. He paid the Vet and was able to keep it. It wasn't aggressive.
 
I still have a little 30 ml glass jar of ash we collected off the car hood in Nebraska. It flows like water. Pretty impactful event in my young life.
 
I was living in St. John, Washington at the time working for a farm co--op. A farmer had just called me at home and ask if I would consider opening up the warehouse as he was spraying his crops for weeds and had ran out of chemicals. I went to the plant and we loaded the chemicals in his truck. As we closed the doors we notice a huge black cloud covering the whole sky coming from the west.
We had no idea what was happening and a few minutes later it was so dark that the street lights in town came on. We thought the world was coming to an end!!
By morning we had several inches of ash on the ground. Ended up shoveling the roof of our house off and loading several 1500 to 2000 gallon water tanks with pumps on farmers trucks to hose off lawns, streets etc. It was a mess!!

Some of the scab rock country that doesn't get farmed still has traces of ash to this day.
 
I was living in the Tri Cities at that time also… I was 5 and my dad worked at the power plant up there, I believe it was called Whoops?
Anyhow the only thing I remember was ashes all over our front driveway…
 
I was living in the Tri Cities at that time also… I was 5 and my dad worked at the power plant up there, I believe it was called Whoops?
Anyhow the only thing I remember was ashes all over our front driveway…
Yes it is Washington Public Powers System - a Reactor for power. They were building two of them, and one got mothballed and never finished. There were 10,000 welders and pipefitters at one time. If they had finished both there would have been massive amounts of power.
The Hanford site there was where Plutonium for the bombs delivered kindly to Japan was made.
I worked at the Plutonium plant and several other historic facilities there. The Plutonium Plant is gone now as it was completely decommissioned and removed .
 
I was fresh out of the Navy and working on a prototype electric locomotive in southern CO. Didn't get much down that way.

Yellowstone is next.
 

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