All I had to go off of was a silent live image on KATU. Various news sites around town hadn't posted the news yet. It was 5:40 PM and a gigantic plume of ash was pouring out of Mt. St. Helens. For all intents and purposes it looked like 1980 all over again.

Stuck at work and with no way to actually hear the broadcast, I fired up IM and started text messaging people for more info. "MT ST. HELENS IS BLOWING UP," my words screamed. "TURN ON THE NEWS! THIS IS IT!"

Thirty minutes later, after getting a handful of people's hopes up, I finally caught an update on kptv.com. While this may have been the largest eruption since St. Helen's began rumbling again last fall, it was only the latest in a long, drawn out series of anti-climatic eruptions.

Or was it? Was this what we were all waiting for? Is this it? Will St. Helen's go back to sleep for another quarter century? For the time being at least, the affiliates are unwilling to put all this in context. Where's a geologist when you need one?

Whatever. I've lost interest. At the very least, the eruption looked impressive.