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Volcanic Steam, Mount St. Helens, Washington, 2000

On Mount St. Helens, a volcanic formation seems to come to life as it exhales a cloud of steam. The volcano in southwestern Washington's Cascade Range is most famous for its May 1980 eruption, one of the largest ever recorded in North America. The catastrophic eruption killed 57 people and triggered an enormous debris avalanche that carved a mile-wide (1.5-kilometer-wide) crater on the mountain.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Mount St. Helens: Nature on Fast Forward," May 2000, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Jim Richardson