The big eruption of Mt. St. Helens is one of those “where-were-you-at-the-time” events. I was at Fairchild AFB, near Spokane, WA (350 miles from the mountain) that morning at the Armed Forces Day open house. Heard a couple people mention news reports that Mt. St. Helens erupted; it’d been shooting steam and ash for months, so nothing sounded alarming. By 2 p.m., the western sky was a rapidly advancing solid-gray sheet. By 3:30, the sky over all of Eastern Washington was completely dark. We saw the first ashfall around 5. In Spokane, we had about 2-3 inches of ash on the ground. It looked like and had the consistency of concrete dust.
Very, very bizarre time.
I was in my teens then but I do recall the coverage of Harry Truman who refused to budge.
http://www.seattlepi.com/mountsthelens/hary11.shtml
I was at home. We found out about it from my grandmother first. She lived in Bend, OR. I still have news clippings she saved for me, and a small bottle of the ash from her yard. I was 11 at the time.
I lived in Moses Lake WA. Church started at 9 a.m. and we could see the ash clouds headed our way. Midway through the service we were told to go home as light ash was falling. By 2 p.m. it was as dark as night and the street lights were on. All in all we had 2-3 inches of ash also and it too was like concrete dust.