On May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted in a cataclysmic event that reshaped parts of the Cascades Mountains to the southwest of Seattle. Since the eruption went mainly sidewise as the north side of the mountain collapsed, the eruption had limited climatological effects globally, although the ash did cause cooling and surface problems in the vicinity of the mountain. Today NASA released a spectacular image of the mountain. You can see it larger with other interesting images of Earth at https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/mount-st-helens-at-35. EarthSky also has a blog posting describing more about the eruption here.
I had the good fortune to visit Mount St. Helens last summer and got to see the devastation “up close and personal”. If you enjoy geology and make a visit to the Pacific Northwest, you will be very interested to see this work of nature in progress.
You can see some satellite footage of the eruption at https://airbornesurfer.com/2015/05/watch-mount-st-helens-eruption-space/. In spite of what this blogger said, however, the video footage was available from the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my graduate school) shortly after the eruption and as far as I know they still have it available.
