The Missoula floods were cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age. These floods were the result of periodic sudden ruptures of the ice dam on the Clark Fork River that created Glacial Lake Missoula. After each ice dam rupture, the waters of the lake would rush down the Clark Fork and the Columbia River, flooding much of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. After the lake drained, the ice would reform, creating Glacial Lake Missoula again.
Lake Missoula was a prehistoric proglacial lake in western Montana that existed periodically at the end of the last ice age between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. The lake measured about 7,770 square kilometres (3,000 sq mi) and contained about 2,100 cubic kilometres (500 cu mi) of water, half the volume of Lake Michigan.
In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around the ice. At the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago, large proglacial lakes were a widespread feature in the northern hemisphere.
In geomorphology, an outburst flood—a type of megaflood—is a high-magnitude, low-frequency catastrophic flood involving the sudden release of a large quantity of water. During the last deglaciation, numerous glacial lake outburst floods were caused by the collapse of either ice sheets or glaciers that formed the dams of proglacial lakes. Examples of older outburst floods are known from the geological past of the Earth and inferred from geomorphological evidence on Mars. Landslides, lahars, and volcanic dams can also block rivers and create lakes, which trigger such floods when the rock or earthen barrier collapses or is eroded. Lakes also form behind glacial moraines or ice dams, which can collapse and create outburst floods.
Grand Coulee is an ancient river bed in the U.S. state of Washington. This National Natural Landmark stretches for about 60 miles (100 km) southwest from Grand Coulee Dam to Soap Lake, being bisected by Dry Falls into the Upper and Lower Grand Coulee.
Camas prairies are found in several different geographical areas in the western United States, and are named for the native perennial camas (Camassia). The culturally and scientifically significant of these areas lie within Idaho and Montana. Camas bulbs were an important food source for Native Americans.
The Channeled Scablands are a relatively barren and soil-free region of interconnected relict and dry flood channels, coulees and cataracts eroded into Palouse loess and the typically flat-lying basalt flows that remain after cataclysmic floods within the southeastern part of Washington state. The Channeled Scablands were scoured by more than 40 cataclysmic floods during the Last Glacial Maximum and innumerable older cataclysmic floods over the last two million years. These floods were periodically unleashed whenever a large glacial lake broke through its ice dam and swept across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch. The last of the cataclysmic floods occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago.
Dry Falls is a 3.5-mile-long (5.6 km) scalloped precipice with four major alcoves, in central Washington scablands. This cataract complex is on the opposite side of the Upper Grand Coulee from the Columbia River, and at the head of the Lower Grand Coulee, northern end of Lenore Canyon. According to the current geological model, catastrophic flooding channeled water at 65 miles per hour through the Upper Grand Coulee and over this 400-foot (120 m) rock face at the end of the last glaciation. It is estimated that the falls were five times the width of Niagara Falls, with ten times the flow of all the current rivers in the world combined.
Diluvium is an archaic term applied during the 1800s to widespread surficial deposits of sediments that could not be explained by the historic action of rivers and seas. Diluvium was initially argued to have been deposited by the action of extraordinary floods of vast extent, specifically the Noachian Flood.
A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) is a type of outburst flood caused by the failure of a dam containing a glacial lake. An event similar to a GLOF, where a body of water contained by a glacier melts or overflows the glacier, is called a jökulhlaup. The dam can consist of glacier ice or a terminal moraine. Failure can happen due to erosion, a buildup of water pressure, an avalanche of rock or heavy snow, an earthquake or cryoseism, volcanic eruptions under the ice, or massive displacement of water in a glacial lake when a large portion of an adjacent glacier collapses into it.
Joseph Thomas Pardee was a U.S. geologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, and contributed to the understanding of the origin of the Channeled Scablands. He discovered the trail of evidence left by Glacial Lake Missoula, a lake created by an ice dam 23 miles (37 km) wide and 0.5 miles (0.8 km) high during the most recent ice age. He discovered that when the dam broke, the water flowed towards the scablands, supporting J Harlen Bretz's theory of the cataclysmic floods.
The Touchet Formation or Touchet beds consist of well-bedded, coarse to fine sand and silt which overlays local bedrock composed of Neogene basalt of the Columbia River Basalt Group in south-central Washington and north-central Oregon. The beds consist of more than 40 to 62 distinct rhythmites – horizontal layers of sediment, each clearly demarcated from the layer below. These Touchet beds are often covered by windblown loess which were deposited later; the number of layers varies with location. The beds vary in thickness from 330 ft (100 m) at lower elevations where a number of layers can be found to a few extremely thin layers at the maximum elevation where they are observed.
Lake Lewis was a large transient lake in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, formed by periodic Missoula Floods along the Columbia River paleocourse between 21,000 and 16,000 years ago.
Moses Coulee is a canyon in the Waterville plateau region of Douglas County, Washington. Moses Coulee is the second-largest and westernmost canyon of the Channeled Scablands, located about 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the west of the larger Grand Coulee. This water channel is now dry, but during glacial periods, large outburst floods with discharges greater than 600,000 m3/s (21,000,000 cu ft/s) carved the channel. While it's clear that glacial floodwaters passed through and contributed to the erosion of Moses Coulee, the age of those waters, thus the origins of the coulee are less clear. No clear connection between the head of the coulee and major flood routes to the north, east, or west is known. Some researchers propose that floods from glacial Lake Missoula formed Moses Coulee, while others suggest that subglacial floods from the Okanogan Lobe incised the canyon. The mouth of Moses Coulee discharges into the Columbia River.
The Columbia Plateau State Park Trail is a 130-mile-long (210 km), 20-foot-wide (6.1 m) corridor in eastern Washington state maintained as part of the Washington State Park system. The rail trail runs along the abandoned right-of-way of the former Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway.
The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail is a network of routes connecting natural sites and facilities that provide interpretation of the geological consequences of the Glacial Lake Missoula floods of the last glacial period that occurred about 18,000 to 15,000 years ago. It includes sites in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. It was designated as the first National Geologic Trail in the United States in 2009.
Ledoyom is a term proposed by the Russian geologist Vasily Nekhoroshev for intermontane depressions which might get completely filled by glaciers from the surrounding mountains at the maxima of glaciation.
The Altai flood refers to the cataclysmic flood(s) that, according to some geomorphologists, swept along the Katun River in the Altai Republic at the end of the last ice age. These glacial lake outburst floods were the result of periodic sudden ruptures of ice dams like those triggering the Missoula floods.
A pendant bar is a large, streamlined, fluvial bar that is typically composed of gravel which occurs just downstream of a bedrock obstruction within a river channel or floodway that has been scoured by either an outburst flood, megaflood, or jökulhlaup. They are often associated with giant current ripples. Malde introduced this to refer to streamlined mounds of gravel deposited by the Bonneville Flood that lie downstream of bedrock projections on the scoured valley floor of the Snake River. They are most common type of bar found within the Channeled Scablands created by the Missoula floods. The obstruction for the initiation of pendant bars in the Channeled Scablands is typically either a knob of basalt or the relict bend of a pre-flood meandering valley.
Lake Atna was a prehistoric proglacial lake that initially formed approximately 58 ka in the Copper River Basin, an area roughly centered around 245 km (152 mi) northeast of modern-day Anchorage, Alaska. The lake formed, and dispersed, during the Wisconsin glaciation. The lake existed in several forms, with several prominent shorelines observable in modern geology. At its greatest extent, the lake surface area was approximately half the size of modern-day Lake Ontario, and possibly much larger. The basin of the lake lay within an area bordered by the Alaska Range to the north, the Wrangell Mountains to the east, the Chugach Mountains to the south, and the Talkeetna Mountains to the west.
