Mt St Helens erruption/explosion whatever you think it was is wrong. Its called nuiee ardanté (dont know the exact spelling). That is erruption comes from the side of the volcano rather than the top. In Mt St Helen's case, there was a landslide only days before on one of the sides. This created an easier route for the gas/magma/whatever to escape. It began to bulge and when it finally errupted, it was more of a flamethrower than a volcano. The cloud shot off like a rocket horizontally fraying right into the people bellow. If it had gone strait up like they normally do, there wouldnt have been a problem and people wouldn't have had lightning fast cloud of superheated material coming right into their face. So stop bickering cuz ur both wrong.