This photo during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, amonst his 33 photos over the course of 33 seconds, by Gary Rosenquist, resembles a giant, preparing to launch a huge boulder.
It looks almost like he is squatting to do lift an Atlas-stone. The last unmarked dark cloud beneath the boulder being his fist, red line being his wrist.
Match or no? I would be happy to hear your thoughts as well.
I did an outline(Not an visual artist) in another comment, for it to be easier for people not seeing it, here it is in this comment as well, have a good day.
It did launch a boulder, when it erupted. Several of them in fact
. So many of them the height of the mountain was lowered about 1300 feet. Some "ballistic projectiles* (some as big as houses) were launched up to 17 miles! But the heaviest decimation was within the 8 mile "blast zone"
Yeah the cross section animation of the mountain is truly stunning.
As I understand it, it was two separate launches made by the giant. One at the crater and one where the mountainside exploded because of the magma finding a channel that diversed from the main chamber.
I think that is also one of the things making this eruption so special.
The side of the mountain slid downhill in what was the largest landslide ever seen. The North face of the volcano had been bulging for several weeks as magma pushed up into the mountain and found a weakness along the channel for Mount St Helens’ previous eruption which outcropped as a formation called Goat Rocks.
As the bulge got more and more steep it became very unstable. A modest earthquake just below the mountain triggered the collapse just a few seconds later. Volcanoes are incredibly weak piles of rock and ash held together largely by gravity; they don’t need much to fall apart. The slide - which is the pale debris in the photo - then triggered the main eruption.
Removing all that rock from the volcano reduced the pressure on the magma under the volcano. That caused gas to come out of magma, creating a hot foam of dark ash. Some of the magma exploded sideways to the north as a pyroclastic flow which, travelling close to the speed of sound, quickly overtook the landslide.
More magma exploded upwards to create the enormous eruption cloud that followed shortly after.
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u/thorn_10 11h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/80mXWlPqTSU1y