Causing an Ice Age

This year marks forty years since the eruption of Mount St. Helens. So we’re looking at some of the lessons this catastrophe taught us.

When the volcano erupted in Washington State, ash was blasted up sixteen miles. The top of the cloud was forty miles across! As the wind blew the ash, entire towns went dark. Now, while this ash cloud was huge, compared to the size of the earth, it was pretty small. Yet it slightly cooled the earth.

Now the rock record tells us there’ve been much bigger volcanos in the past. One was a thousand times bigger! Imagine how many volcanos—erupting after the flood would’ve cooled the earth?

And they helped create the conditions for an ice age.

Dig Deeper

• Lasting Lessons from Mount St. Helens
• Four Lessons from the Mount St. Helens Eruption