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This is a truly unique recording. Several years ago I found out that I am the only person in the world who captured audio of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the volcano in Washington state. I was in high school in 1980, living in Newport, Oregon, 140 miles southwest of the mountain. May 18 was a beautiful sunny morning, and as we were eating breakfast we heard several distant "thuds" or booms. We went outside, and noticed that they were coming from the north. We had no idea what they were, and since Mt. St. Helens was so far away, we "knew" it could not be the mountain. But in the back of my mind I thought, "could it be?". So I grabbed a tape recorder and set it in a window box upstairs on the north side of the house. This recording is an excerpt of what I captured. The entire tape is about eight minutes long. Unfortunately the quality is poor, but it was the only tape recorder we owned. I started recording about two minutes after we heard the first boom. In total there were about 10 booms over a period of about ten minutes. I never did anything with the tape because of the poor quality. Also I figured that the USGS, etc. had also recorded the sound. But I found out recently that no one else made an audio recording. The booms were picked up on seismometers, but no audio was recorded. As I understand it, when the mountain first erupted it sent a low-frequency "shock wave" straight up. This wave reflected off several layers of the atmosphere, bouncing back to the ground in a large donut-shaped ring about 50 to 300 miles around the mountain. People within 50 miles of the mountain did not hear anything. I am not sure if what we heard was one "shock wave" reflected many times between layers of the atmosphere and the ground, or a series of waves. The booms are very low frequency, thus you should listen with headphones or larger speakers. On laptop speakers you probably won't hear anything. Many people who heard the booms described them as a series of "thuds". I also believe that this may be the only audio recording of this phenomena from any volcano. I imagine that the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 sounded similar to this (but louder). I wonder too if anyone knows of any atmospheric audio recorded from a distance greater than this (140 miles/225 km)? If you would like to study the entire recording, please contact me.
UPDATE 6/8/2014: I have uploaded the original, untouched recording here: http://www.freesound.org/people/daveincamas/sounds/240257/
Type
Wave (.wav)
Duration
0:43.453
File size
3.7 MB
Sample rate
44100.0 Hz
Bit depth
16 bit
Channels
Mono
15 years, 12 months ago
That is incredible - thanks so much for sharing. Quite scary how ominous that sounds even 28 years later.
16 years ago
You have no idea how amazing it is for me to hear this. I was living in Eugene then. I remember that sound jolting me out of my sleep. I've always been a deep sleeper and, at that time, I was a college kid sleeping in on a Sunday morning after a typical Sat. night. So, you know it was powerful. I recall thinking that something had exploded in the garage next door. Only later did I make the connection. Now, after reading your note, I suspect that I didn't hear it as much as feel it. My bedroom was on the ground floor of a house with no basement. My box spring sat directly on the floor - no frame - with the mattress on top. So, I would have been in a good position to feel that shockwave bounce off the ground. Anyway, thank you very much for posting this. It's like a wormhole back to one of the most memorable moments of my lifetime.
16 years ago
Whoa...! Absolutely AMAZING. I have to echo Sandyrb here: "It's an eerie, chilling sound-knowing what it actually is." Thank you for sharing this nearly lost and invaluably important piece of history with us! WOW!
16 years, 1 month ago
Did you feel the quaking during the recording? This is one very scary recording!
16 years, 2 months ago
I heard this very low sounding thud while standing in a parking lot in Lynwood, north of Seattle. It was overcast that day and you couldn't see Mt. Rainier. The USGS was monitoring the earthquake activity and everyone seemed to be on high alert that something was going to happen. It was the next day when the overcast had lifted that you could see the ash column roiling sky ward. Awesome!