Evolution
Mount St. Helens
The explosion of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, was initiated by an earthquake and a rock slide involving one-half cubic mile of rock. As the summit and north slope slid off the volcano that morning, pressure was released inside the volcano - where super hot liquid water immediately flashed to steam.48
The northward-directed steam explosion released energy equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT and toppled 150 square miles of forest in six minutes. In Spirit lake, north of the volcano, an enormous water wave, caused by one-eighth cubic mile of rock slide debris, stripped trees from slopes as high as 850 feet above the pre-eruption water level. The total energy output, on May 18 was equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT - approximately 20,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.48
The eruption of Mount St. Helens produced up to 400 feet of stratified rocks which look millions of years old, but were produced in days or hours. Even though radioactive measurements of these rocks show them to be millions of years old, we know they were formed in 1980 because scientists saw them formed.48, 63
"These deposits accumulated from primary air blast, landslide, waves on the lake, pyroclastic flows, mud flows, air fall, and stream water. Perhaps the most surprising accumulations are the pyroclastic flow deposits amassed from ground-hugging, fluidized, turbulent slurries of fine volcanic debris, which moved at high velocities off the flank of the volcano as the eruption plume of debris over the volcano collapsed. These deposits include fine pumice ash laminae and beds from one millimeter thick to greater than one meter thick, each representing just a few seconds to several minutes of accumulation. A deposit accumulated in less than one day, on June 12, 1980, is 25 feet thick and contains many thin laminae and beds. Conventionally, sedimentary laminae and beds are assumed to represent longer seasonal variations, or annual changes, as the layers accumulated very slowly. Mount St. Helens teaches us that the stratified layers commonly characterizing geological formations can form very rapidly by flow processes."48
Photographic documentation demonstrates that very pronounced rills and gullies over 125 feet deep formed at the margins of seam explosion pits before May 23 - less than five days after the pumice was deposited. The rills and gullies resemble badlands topography, which geologists have usually assumed required many hundreds or even thousands of years to form.48
A mud flow on March 19, 1982, eroded a canyon system up to 140 feet deep in the headwaters of the North Fork of the Toutle River Valley, created a new drainage pattern: the little "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River," a one-fortieth scale model of the real Grand Canyon. The small creeks that flow through the headwaters of the Toutle River today might appear to have carved these canyons very slowly over a long time period, except for the fact that the erosion was observed to have occurred rapidly!48
"Mount St. Helens provides a rare opportunity to study transient geologic processes which produced, within a few months, changes which geologists might otherwise assume required many thousands of years. The volcano, therefore, challenges our way of thinking about how the earth works, how it changes, and the time scale we are accustomed to attaching to its formations. These processes and their effects allow Mount St. Helens to serve as a miniature laboratory for catastrophism. Mount St. Helens helps us to imagine what the Biblical Flood, of Noah's day, may have been like."48