Small particles in plumes of Mount St. Helens
Particles in the size range 0.1-25 microns were sampled by aircraft carrying a quartz crystal microcascade in the Mount St. Helens plume on three dates in August and September 1980. Two of the sampling dates represented 'typical' emissions of the volcano between plinian eruptions. One sampling flight was made 1-4 hours before the small plinian eruption of August 7, 1980 when the plume had become discontinuous and visibly darker. The plume sampled on August 7, before the eruption, contained mainly approximately 2-micron diameter silicic glass particles, fragments of the Mount St. Helens magma. The typical plumes sampled on September 22 and August 6 had much smaller concentrations of particles, trimodal size distributions with peaks at 10, 0.4, and 0.1 microns. The particles were largely nonsilicate and apparently represented Cu-Zn oxide (10 micron peak), Al sulfate, chloride, and oxide, and sulfuric acid (smallest size peak).