The Ice Age Floods and ID/WA Landscapes (Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint: house, earthquake)

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Lately we've become addicted to a series of YouTube lectures by Nick Zentner, professor at CWU, explaining the geology of the NW and in particular the Ice Age floods and the story of glacial Lake Missoula. We've been spending a lot of time at home this spring (in CA lockdown...), and Nick's videos have been a welcome relief from disturbing TV news. Here are two of the videos:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1BFb_uYlFQ


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJo8m4oKc6k

Zentner is a bit WA-centric, because he is working our of CWU at Ellensburg, but there is enough material about Idaho to make it forum-relevant.

We already have a number of books on the Ice Age floods, because when we bought our property in Clark Fork, we learned that 13-14,000 years ago as the ice sheet began to retreat, Lake Missoula was held back by this mile-high ice dam (Purcell Trench Lobe), and it broke right in the Clark Fork Valley and sent a flood of ice water all the way across WA to the Pacific, creating the scablands and other fascinating geological features.So we wanted to read as much as possible about not only one flood, but at least 40, maybe 100 Ice Age floods. Nick Zentner has a very entertaining teaching style, and his videos have great footage and animation. They contain so much information that we're making lists of new geo-places to visit in ID and WA on future weekend trips. We can't wait! Maybe this will be an inspiration for some of you, too?

[banjomike]

Lake Missoula is fascinating indeed!

It shocked me at first, but I think we all think huge changes in nature always take very long stretches of time.

Obviously, the conditions to cause change take a long time, but when a triggering event happens, huge change can happen very, very quickly.

When Lake Bonneville broke through the mountain ridges that held it in during an earthquake, the Snake River canyon was carved over a mile deep in only a couple of days as the huge lake drained.
And that event was smaller than the Lake Missoula drainage. And Lake Missoula didn't drain just once either; it drained several times.

But I think the all-time whopper was the Mediterranean Sea. An earthquake closed the narrow strait at Gibralter, and without the waters of The Atlantic to feed it, the Med eventually dried up completely.
If a human had lived at that time, he could have walked on the sea floor from Europe to Africa. (If he could have withstood the heat; at nearly a mile deep, the dry sea bottom would have been about 130º.)

All the water vapor from the evaporating Sea turned the deserts in Africa and the Middle East into lush jungle. Then, when the basin refilled, it all reverted back to deserts again.
That's why the oil exists under the sands of the Middle East. It's the ancient plant life.

Then, thousands of years later, another quake re-opened the strait, and The Atlantic re-filled the Mediterranean Basin in less than a week. So much water flowed in so fast it broke the sound barrier continuously until all the water reached one level.

[nm9stheham]

My wife and I watched those videos. They are very instructive and he presents the info in a very engaging fashion. I've been looking at and studying a lot of western geology and it is super-varied. Go back far enough, to the creation of the 'basement rocks', exposed in places like the Tetons, the Wind River, and Beartooth mountains, read up on the continental drift theories, and you find that much of the area was south of the equator at one time!


There is a great digital map of Idaho's geology that you can find on-line.

[volosong]

I've watched Zetner's videos in the past and wished I lived closer to Ellensburg so that I could take some of his classes. It would be a kick to take a field class with him.

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

There is a great digital map of Idaho's geology that you can find on-line.

This one? https://www.idahogeology.org/product/m-9

[nm9stheham]

That looks like the one! Some very fine detail in that map.

[dcisive]

Nick's videos are addicting to be sure. Got hooked on and binge watched them over a year ago. He's so knowledgeable and covers everything from the landscapes layout to the rock details and more. I love his lecture style. Like potato chips once you start watching his videos you're hooked, in a good way

[oldafretired]

Originally Posted by Clark Fork Fantast

Lately we've become addicted to a series of YouTube lectures by Nick Zentner, professor at CWU...

Thanks for posting the videos, CFF! Hope your house in CF will be finished soon.

[509]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Lake Missoula is fascinating indeed!

It shocked me at first, but I think we all think huge changes in nature always take very long stretches of time.

Obviously, the conditions to cause change take a long time, but when a triggering event happens, huge change can happen very, very quickly................

........But I think the all-time whopper was the Mediterranean Sea. An earthquake closed the narrow strait at Gibralter, and without the waters of The Atlantic to feed it, the Med eventually dried up completely.
If a human had lived at that time, he could have walked on the sea floor from Europe to Africa. (If he could have withstood the heat; at nearly a mile deep, the dry sea bottom would have been about 130º.)........................................... ......

Then, thousands of years later, another quake re-opened the strait, and The Atlantic re-filled the Mediterranean Basin in less than a week. So much water flowed in so fast it broke the sound barrier continuously until all the water reached one level.

I have to laugh when people talk about “settled science”.

It took Bretz a VERY LONG TIME to get his apology from the scientific geology community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Harlen_Bretz

I remember the first time I drove across eastern Washington. I had all these ecology classes as a newly minted Forester. Stopped the truck and wondered...how in the world this happen?

https://usbackroads.blogspot.com/201...ashington.html

My father was born in the Black Sea area. As I was growing up he kept telling stories about the Great Flood.

I was puzzled since my father was NOT religious and I thought it odd that he kept returning to the story of the flood.

Years later, I ran into scientific reports of the “flood” when the Mediterranean rose enough to flood and create the Black Sea. There are “underwater” villages in the Black Sea. Archaeologists are donning scuba gear to document life in the villages before the Great Flood!!!

It was interesting that he mentioned the flood, but never Noah!! So what culture did the legend of Noah come from???

[f5fstop]

From experience, science is never settled. But when someone says a person is a science denier, my answer has always been I'm a scientist denier.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

I should have guessed that a lot of you guys know about Nick's videos already! I wish he'd read up on the the actual breakings of the ice dam 2000 ft over Clark Fork. He keeps saying it happened at Sandpoint, but he is 25 miles off (less across the lake). No big deal! But the Clark Fork geology fits the ice dam breaking up, with the valley in-between two mountain ranges. That's where the dam was. We look at those ice striations on the rock sides the every time we drive down River Road in-between the Cabinets and the Coeur d'Alenes/Bitterroots.

About the "flood" associations. Apparently a lot of science-minded people in the early 20th century were reluctant to even considering the idea of any flood, because they didn't want to be mistaken for referring to the Biblical flood. Science isn't as objective as we like to think, is it? But of course there have been "secular" floods all over the world. The Black Sea flood is fascinating--it really happened, within a few days, also as a delayed result of the end of the last ice age.

Mike, the Noah legend may have come from Sumer, the old story of a man called Utnapishtim. One of the gods gave him a tip that another god was going to flood the land, so he built a boat for himself, his wife, his crew and his animals, and survived that way. The gods granted him immortality. The story is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth