Mt. St. Helens - A Local Retrospective
May 1980
by T. Alan Place

I was on a long training run with two friends. We were preparing for the Coeur d'Alene Marathon at the end of May 1980. We were on a country road eight miles west of Moscow, Idaho, when we saw a dark cloud approaching. At first we thought it was a storm cloud, and a woman on horseback warned us of rain. The cloud that was rapidly approaching us from the west was like a black billowing curtain being drawn across the sky. We finally realized that it was the ash cloud from St. Helens, and that we needed to get home before the ash fall. Getting home meant running eight miles east. We could not beat the cloud. As the darkness overtook us all the birds stopped singing. As we approached town all the street lights switched on, even though it was the middle of the day. I got to my street just as the first ash hit the ground. Running while ingesting the abrasive ash would have been impossible. It made our eyes sting. We all made it home, and woke up the next morning to see an inch of fine gray ash covering everything.