Thinking about Mt. St. Helens and the current activity(32,000 ft. blow)...I lived in Spokane, WA when the "major volcanic event" happened on May 18, 1980. When the eruption occured, I was napping with my newborn and at 1:21 pm, I awoke in the dark...

On the day that turned to night
the ash was a heavy black curtain
that blocked the brilliance of the sun.

Who could see through the gray cloud that snowed particles of glass pulverized into fine crystaline dust?

It blew in the door and window cracks which were stuffed in vain with newspaper to stop the flow and we sweated behind the polyester masks
as we waited inside our exposed house.

The eerie silence that surrounded us was broken by reports on the tv of huge mud flows that swallowed trees and houses and Harry Truman, the old man of the mountain who refused to move from his home.

The force of Mt. St.Helen's blast layed down trees for miles, tiddly winks thrown on the mountainside burned raw by the heat that turned green to black.
The tumultuous clouds of ash could be seen clear to the Rockies, they rose so high and wide and gulped the sky that was choked for air and it rained cinder remnants of what used to be summit, someone's climbing dream.

The quakes that woke the mountain shook the ground for days while tourists by the hundreds amassed to see the destruction and its aftermath because the Old Girl had been sleeping for over one hundred years...

The Day That Turned To Night