I think the Pleistocene flash flooding of Oregon and Washington State is a cool read, those ice dams at Lake Missoula must have been huge.
I think the Pleistocene flash flooding of Oregon and Washington State is a cool read, those ice dams at Lake Missoula must have been huge.
According to geologists, Lake Bonneville was formed from an ice dam during the last major Ice Age on this planet. As the glaciers receded, the dam probably melted and gave way about 15,500 years ago, resulting in a huge torrent of water that craved out the Snake River Canyon and much of the canyons of the Columbia River basin.
It's been speculated that many of the human legends of a Great Flood may be based on humans witnessing the collapse of ice dams at the end of the last great Ice Age causing massive land flooding; the stories got passed down through oral tradition. Oceanographer Robert Ballard (of Titanic rediscovery fame) said in National Geographic magazine that the Black Sea around 9,000 BC rose quite rapidly because of the combination of water coming from the north from glacial melting and the sudden rush of water from the south through the Bosphorus Straits.