About Mount St. Helens

• Mount St. Helens is a relatively young volcano, just 40,000 years old. The cone that collapsed in 1980 was only 2,200 years old. Before 1980, it had been dormant since 1857.

• Northwest Indians called the mountain Louwala-Clough, meaning "smoking mountain." Legends vary, but one holds that the mountain was once a beautiful maiden, Loowit. When two sons of the great spirit Sahale fell in love with her, she could not choose between them. The two braves, Wy'east and Klickitat, fought over her, burying villages and forests in the process. Sahale was furious and smote the three lovers; he erected a mountain peak where each fell. Because Loowit was beautiful, St. Helens had a comely, symmetrical cone of dazzling white. Wy'east -- Mount Hood -- lifts his head in pride. But Klickitat (Mount Adams) wept to see his love wrapped in snow, and bends his head as he gazes on her.

• St. Helens was named for British diplomat Alleyne Fitzherbert, whose title was Baron St. Helens. Capt. George Vancouver and the officers of HMS Discovery named the peak while they were surveying the northern Pacific Coast from 1792 to 1794. Fitzherbert was then Britain's ambassador to Spain.

• Though devastating to the area around the mountain, the eruption is not considered exceptional by worldwide historical standards.

• In the past 500 years, St. Helens produced four major explosive eruptions. One, in 1480, was about five times larger than the 1980 blast.

• Scientists had been warning since 1975 that St. Helens was nearing eruption.

• The 1980 eruption was preceded by two months of intense activity that included more than 10,000 earthquakes, hundreds of small phreatic (steam blast) explosions and an 80-meter bulge in the mountain's north flank.

• After the 1980 blast, there were five smaller eruptions over five months, and a series of 16 dome-building eruptions through late 1986 that created an 880-foot-tall lava dome in the crater.

• Of the 13 potentially eruptive volcanoes in the Cascade Range, St. Helens is the most active.

• St. Helens blew at exactly 8:32 a.m., on a Sunday. Nearly 20 years later, the Kingdome was imploded at 8:32 a.m., on a Sunday.

  Coincidence?