[jackibutterfly]

"It is blows and destroys several states just think of all the jobs it will create!"

WHICH states????

[Arizona Carolyn]

At least half the country -- this map shows areas affected by the previous erruptions...

http://www.damninteresting.net/content/Yellowstone_Ash_Fall_Map.jpg

[Steve Van Doorn]

It would be easier to ask which states will not be effected.

[Arizona Carolyn]

and here is another even more detailed map of previous erruptions...

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.brendans-island.com/blogsource/YellowstoneEventMap-9.jpg&imgrefurl=http://apatheticlemming.blogspot.com/2009/02/attention-governor-jinal-volcanos-go.html&h=484&w=600&sz=47&tbnid=NPe4vqgUaGBNPM:&tbnh=109&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyellowstone%2Beruption%2Bmap&hl=en&usg=__YFctv-ThWraQbgax0R0IS3ySbS0=&ei=PAhpS-f4DdGOtgf3pLHfBg&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=6&ct=image&ved=0CBYQ9QEwBQ

[combat_boots]

Well, I can tell you that based ont he St. Helens blow in 1980, that is going to depend, if this does happen. It was a wild time, having to clean ash from a ‘smoking’ mountain off your windshield north of Seattle. Every dang day. And the rain just made it mushy. People kept having to change their air cleaners in their cars.

You’d see people on bridges lined up, one after the other, watching St. Helens smoke. Then there came THE BULGE.

The position of the bulge appeared to indicate a blowout coming toward the NE, IIRC, so the USGS pounced with their copters and geologists and people measuring things all over. There were evacuations, especially around Spirit Lake and the vacation area there, on the left/west of the mountain.

There was this one old salt, Harry Truman, who owned a lodge up on Spirit Lake. He wouldn’t leave. The government may have forceably removed him, but he went back.

The bulge got bigger & bigger until one Sunday morning, at about 8:30 am, Ka-Boom. I was up in the inside passage and I heard it. Clear as day. Thought a naval base was signaling the time or something, but the sound had traveled over water, of course. Div arty would wish it were that loud.

Clear skies! Glorious day! And then the clouds came and it commenced to rain. And rain.

Later, I drove down I-5 and drove over the Toutle River bridge that was hauling so much of the sludge and trees and mountainside down toward the Columbia River and on to the Pacific there at Longview/Portland, close by where Lewis and Clark had been.

Old Harry Truman never was found, and the mountain changed, of course. Big old snow plows swept ash from I-90. But the peach and apple crops were enriched beyond measure, with earth now fertilized by Mt. St. Helens and God Almighty.

I, however, grew to miss my tea time on Mt. St. Helens.