Blast Facts

Lots of things changed as a result of the Sunday morning eruption:

• 57 people lost their lives.
• 150,000 acres of forests were devastated.
• A large portion of the mountaintop cascaded into the valley below, leaving the mountain 1,314 feet shorter. It now stands 8,363 feet tall.
• The crater formed inside the mountain was 2,084 feet deep, 1.8 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.
• All lava erupted from 1980 to 2008 has refilled about 7% of the crater created by the 1980 eruption.
• The lateral blast of the landslide traveled nearly 18 miles to the north and northwest, carrying 23 square miles of debris as fast as 650 miles per hour.
• The ash cloud reached 17 miles into sky and circled the entire earth in two weeks.
• Ash from the eruption column fell as far away as North Dakota.
• Forests in 234-square-mile arc were leveled.
• Rock-filled wind traveled at 670 miles per hour to the north, sandblasting the earth and ripping out trees by their roots.
• Heated air from the blast reached 660 degrees F. The pyroclastic flows were more than 1,300 degrees F and traveled at 200 mph.
• 24 megatons of thermal energy were released.
• Though the eruption lasted nine hours, most damage was done in the first nine minutes.
• President Jimmy Carter toured the devastation and later said, "Someone said this area looked like a moonscape. But the moon looks more like a golf course compared to what's up there."