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Watching it, realizing it would plow right through the river valley between them and the mountain, Catherine thought of two words: “nuée ardente,” glowing cloud.

So we fled… Nuee ardente from west, Mount St. Helens.

“Nuée ardente” immediately came to mind as it became obvious nothing would stop it – not even the deep river valley that lay between us and the mountain.

A “nueé ardente”, today referred as pyroclastic density current, is a mixture of volcanic particles and hot gases that flows according to its density over long distances.