36 Years Ago Flying Back From Vancouver Only Heard The Pictures Today

36 years ago, my family was diverted to Seattle while flying back from Vancouver, BC because of Mnt. St. Helens exploding. My grandfather was a fighter pilot and not scared of much so, of course, he flew his family towards the violence to have a look. Only heard of these pictures till today.You just added to history OP. Of course those photos are going to be in filler articles for CNN, Yahoo, Fox, etc. Especially since there has been recent activity detected under the volcano. Hopefully they come to you to tell a story about your BA grandfather.

Apparently they were one only two planes in the sky initially, the other being Nat. Geo. They were in no immediate danger as they were flying on the west side and up wind from the ash. They both helped relay radio messages of ground conditions to State Police to help coordinate recovery crews.They actually heard Krakatoa over 3000 miles away but people that were close did not report it as being that loud, really muffled sounding, probably having to do with the way acoustic waves work but interesting either way. That book has some really interesting stuff in it. Krakatoa was the first truly global event since the telegraph lines had just been laid across the oceans.

The resulting blast laterally directed the pyroclastic flow of very hot volcanic gases, ash and pumice formed from new lava, while the pulverized old rock hugged the ground, initially moving at 220 miles per hour (350 km/h) but quickly accelerating to 670 mph (1,080 km/h), and it might have briefly passed the speed of sound.

Lava is not the dangerous part of the volcanic eruption, lava flow generally moves pretty slowly so people rarely ever die from it. The part of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption which cause the most devastation was the pyroclastic flow... basically an ash hurricane full of debris which can be hot enough to melt your skin off and moves at hundreds of miles per hour. So it's not "just as dangerous" it's WAY MORE dangerous than the lava flow.Really??? That's very scary. Scientists say that if Mt. Helens explodes again it will trigger a hole in the Yellowstone mega supervolcano which will explode. And if that happens the earth might split in two, causing one half to fly towards the sun.