Mt. St. Helens

There is a good article on the threats from Mt. St. Helens at SFGate.com from the AP Science Writer, Mount St. Helens packs an awesome arsenal of natural weapons
I'm going to give you some personal observations from someone who lives about 60 miles away, me. To give you some perspective a picture I took of the July, 1980 eruption from NW Portland can be found HERE. With the heightened alerts and with the new information coming in indicating this may well be a big one, we in Portland watch the weather reports to see which way the wind is blowing both on the ground and at higher altitudes. It appears that for the next few days the ash would be carried away from Portland. A brief description of what it's like in an ash fall can be found HERE. Today was very strange. Although the mountain really hasn't done anything yet, we noticed something was missing today, birds. There are no birds. I normally have a multitude of sparrows, finches, robins junkos, hummingbirds in my yard. I live near a wildlife refuge so there are normally geese, ducks and herons flying over. Today, almost nothing except a few crows. I took a walk in a forested park a few miles from here today and it was quiet, no birds. I don't claim to know what this means but it is spooky.