Mount Saint Helens On May 18, 1980, it was an amazingly beautiful day for May in the Pacific Northwest. Being a Sunday, there were only a few loggers, campers and scientists in the area. Many of these people had thought they were safe because of the mountain's silence. Not even the scientists could predict exactly what was to come. At 8:32 a.m. a 5.1 magnitude quake struck one mile below the mountain. While there had been literally hundreds …showed first 75 words of 319 total…

…showed last 75 words of 319 total…the surface. Several lakes that were still frozen over went like untouched even though all the life around them was destroyed. The presence of plant life attracted deer and elk to return to the area. With their wanderings, they stirred up even more ash, freeing seeds and shoots of plants still buried. Even though there were over 1500 elk killed as a result of the eruption, the elk population had returned threefold by the early 1990's.