/ Mount St. Helens 25th Anniversary

It was a clear and quiet Sunday morning when the mountain violently erupted, claiming 57 lives and changing the landscape forever.
 Archived video of the eruption: 1 | 2

Survivors recall the dramatic events and their close brushes with death when the mountain blew.

KING 5 meteorologist Jeff Renner recounts his experience reporting from the disaster zone twenty five years ago.

After 18 years of relative quiet, Mount St. Helens began shuddering again in October of 2004, when magma deep below the surface began moving up the throat of the volcano, spewing molten rock into the crater and rebuilding the volcano's dome.

When Mount St. Helens exploded on May 18, 1980, more than 150 square miles of forestland were instantly turned into a gray wasteland. But 25 years later, the land is well on its way to recovery.

While Mount Rainier isn’t scaring residents away, scientists consider it a sleeping giant that is due for another eruption after the last one 150 years ago.

Mount St. Helens and other Northwest volcanoes are all part of the Ring of Fire, an arc encompassing more than 75 percent of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.