It was the morning of May 18, 1980, a Sunday. I remember it being a warm and dry. We were having a late breakfast and listening to the radio, when the DJ stopped the music and started reading news reports about the eruption. That was when the fear and anxiety first started to creep in. We had heard stories for a few months about Mount St. Helens, how it had been rumbling, and had erupted once or twice, but only emitted small clouds of steam and ash. This time was different. It was spitting out an enormous and growing cloud of ash and God-knows-what-else, and that dark cloud was headed straight toward us.

Keep in mind that this was 1980—cellphones did not exist, the web had not yet been invented, and there were no 24-hour news channels. There was literally no way for us to see what was happening at the volcano. Our best sources of news were the radio speakers and our own eyes, as we stood on our porch and looked nervously at the horizon to the west.

Local TV stations interrupted shows once or twice to let us know the volcano had erupted, but they had less information than the radio stations did. News reports were telling us that the volcano was unrecognizable after the explosive eruption, and that a massive, thick column of ash was billowing miles into the sky. We didn’t really know what that meant, but it was coming in our direction. We had never seen such a thing before, and didn’t have any real context, only our imagination. Everyone was told to stay home, seek cover, and stay indoors.

Things were sounding scarier by the minute.

Hosts, local officials, and callers spoke on the radio for hours as we waited. Frightening concepts were discussed, like the possibility of multiple feet of ash falling from the sky and burying us. Or, maybe the ash cloud might be laden with toxic gases that might poison us all. Or perhaps the tiny ash particles would have sharp edges and would tear up our lungs. Or—scariest of all—maybe the ash might have so much sulfur content that it could turn to sulfuric acid when it became wet.

All we could do was seal up the house as tight as possible and wait. It was both nerve-wracking and dreadfully boring at the same time. The radio told us that ash was passing over Yakima, and we heard people talk about how dark it became. A little after noon, we stepped out on the porch and could see a dark cloud approaching on the horizon. It wasn’t like any storm cloud I’d ever seen, more like a black curtain drawing closer. We hadn’t heard any confirmed reports about poisonous gases, so we hoped for the best.

The sky began to darken and the ash fell like snow. Small, fine, gray particles that were just slightly gritty between your fingertips. The dark curtain of a cloud stretched across the sky, with a billowy underside. Streetlights switched on in the middle of the afternoon. Soon, you could hardly see those streetlights. The ash swirled and fell gently as the sky turned black and the world became still—no traffic sounds, no distant airplanes—just the dark silence of a midnight snowstorm, only it was happening on an afternoon in May.