Word: cratered
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...Volcano Expert David Johnston, 30, who had climbed to a monitoring site five miles from Washington State's Mount St. Helens in the snow-capped Cascade Range, 40 miles northeast of Portland, Ore. He wanted to peer through binoculars at an ominous bulge building up below the crater, which had been rumbling and steaming for eight weeks, and report his observations to the U.S. Geological Survey center in Vancouver, Wash...
Clouds of hot ash made up of pulverized rock were belched twelve miles into the sky. Giant mud slides, composed of melted snow mixed with ash and propelled by waves of superheated gas erupting out of the crater, rumbled down the slopes Hiroshima, crashed through valleys, leaving millions of trees knocked down in rows, as though a giant had been playing pick-up sticks...
...expect to salvage about 80% of the logs by sawing those not badly scorched into usable lumber. Sportsmen who venture into what was once prime fish and game area on the mountain's flanks will find nearly all life wiped out within a 15-mile radius of the crater. The rivers and state-run fish hatcheries near the mountain have been ruined as breeding grounds for steelhead trout and Chinook salmon. Said Mike Wharton, an employee of the Washington State department of game: "We've lost millions of fish." When might the area recover? Replied Wharton...
Crops within three miles of the crater were destroyed. Downwind, in a triangular swath stretching 200 miles to the east, about 10% of the crops suffered some damage from the dust. Several fields of alfalfa and wheat in eastern Washington were flattened by the weight of ash. When wetted by rains, like those that fell four days after the blast, ash on the ground forms a thick cement-like glop that young shoots may be unable to break through...
...Helens began acting up, dozens of scientists flocked to its flanks to plant instruments and set up observation posts. Indeed, until last week's eruption, the scientists hovered over the mountain almost as intently as parents do over a precocious child. Geologists even flew curiosity, over the fuming crater. Why the seemingly foolhardy curiosity, which almost surely cost the lives of three investigators? Explains one researcher: "Volcanoes are windows through which the scientist looks into the bowels of the earth...