Relive Important Archive Articles
A large number of important articles get buried over time as new articles are added to our website, so here’s a chance to review and relive some of our most important articles. We think you might enjoy reviewing these timeless features.
Earth in the Next Billion Years
No one can ever say for sure what the future will bring, but this new video has summed up all the science-backed predictions that we can reasonably make about how Earth will change over the next 1 billion years. It’s … Read more…
Humans in the Beringia Yukon ~24,000 Years Ago
Archaeologists have long debated how and when people entered the Americas. Throughout the 20th century, the mainstream hypothesis was that the Clovis people were the first to pass into Alaska about 13,000 years ago. Stemming from his excavations between 1977 … Read more…
Washington’s Ice Age Floods – ESRI Story Map
The Washington Geological Survey (formerly the Division of Geology and Earth Resources) has just released an ESRI story map about the Ice Age Floods in Washington. The story map: “tells the story of cataclysmic outburst floods that shaped the landscape … Read more…
Rowena Crest – Tom McCall Nature Preserve
Overlooking a major chokepoint along the Ice Age Floods path, Rowena Crest lies at nearly 700 feet above the Columbia River at the upstream end of Rowena Plateau, a miles-long promontory that protrudes into the path of the river. This … Read more…
Explore the Columbia River Gorge
The Columbia River Gorge is an incredibly popular area to visit, and that’s for good reason, the setting is uniquely spectacular. The Gorge encompasses: Easily accessible ecozones that range through boreal conifer forests, oak woodlands, high desert grasslands and alpine … Read more…
Kennewick Man – Today in History
Kennewick Man is the name generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. Two young men discovered the skull of Kennewick Man when … Read more…
13,000 Year-Old Human Footprints Found on BC Island
Big feet. Little feet. A heel here. A toe there. A digitally enhanced photo of a footprint found at Calvert Island, British Columbia that researchers dated to 13,000 years old. Credit Duncan McLaren Stamped across the shoreline of Calvert Island, British … Read more…
New Saber-Toothed Cat Species May Have Hunted Rhinos in America
Using detailed fossil comparison techniques, scientists have been able to identify a giant new saber-toothed cat species, Machairodus lahayishupup, which would have prowled around the open spaces of North America between 5 and 9 million years ago. One of the biggest … Read more…
Jökulhlaups in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
A recent Smithsonian Magazine article gives some interesting insights to present-day Jökulhlaups (glacial outburst floods) that are but minuscule relatives of the cataclysmic Ice Age Floods. Iceberg Lake was on the edge of a western tributary of the Tana Glacier, … Read more…
ESA Maps a Lava Tube for Moon and Mars Expeditions
With all deference to the book and movie “The Martian”, wouldn’t you, as part of an interplanetary expedition, prefer to be protected from the radiation, micro-meteorites and extreme temperature fluctuations of the Moon or Martian surface? Though some of the … Read more…
Lava + Ice + Water = Floods Geology
Floods of lava (Columbia River Basalts) and Ice Age Floods of water (Lake Missoula floods and the Bonneville Flood) are world-famous topics among geologists. To have both sets of floods in the same area means the geology of the Inland … Read more…
Ice Age Floods: A Journey of Awakening – Susan Langsley
Do you ever hear the Led Zepplin song “Kashmir” in your head when contemplating the Ice Age Floods? “I am a traveler of both time and space. To be where I have been” –Robert Plant, Led Zepplin’s Kashmir My 11-year … Read more…
Field Trip to the High Water Mark at Ovando
A small but intrepid group explored one of the lesser known areas flooded by Glacial Lake Missoula on October 23rd. The area is the Blackfoot arm stretching northeast from Missoula along Highway 200 to Ovando, where flood waters would have … Read more…
Ortley Thrust in the Columbia Gorge
The near vertical beds known locally as The Pinnacles lie on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, just west of Doug’s Beach and across the Columbia from Rowena OR, and are readily visible from I-84. The WA Interactive … Read more…
Frenchman Coulee Drone Video
Bruce Bjornstad is at it again with his awesome Ice Age Floodscapes drone videos, this one from Frenchman Coulee. Watch it below and visit his Ice Age Floodscapes YouTube channel.for many more. Read more...
My Hill
As a city kid in the ‘60s my family occasionally visited my grandparents in the farm country of Washington State’s Waterville plateau. My grandfather and two uncles were wheat farmers near the small town of Withrow, the future site of … Read more…
Could a Glacial Outburst Flood Repeat the “Younger Dryas” Cooling Event?
An ancient flood seems to have stalled the circulation of the oceans, plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a millennium of near-glacial conditions. Thirteen thousand years ago, an ice age was ending, the Earth was warming, the oceans were rising. Then … Read more…
Williams Lake Cataract Video
Williams Lake Cataract is an ancient, dry waterfall left behind along the Cheney-Palouse Scabland Tract in eastern Washington after Ice Age flooding recessionally ripped out underlying basalt to produce this massive cataract. Video produced by Bruce Bjornstad, Ice Age Floodscapes Read more...
Uncovering a Columbian Mammoth
There’s a Columbian Mammoth hiding out in Coyote Canyon down Kennewick way, and MCBONES Research Center Foundation is working to uncover his/her hiding place. For a small contribution you can tour this hide-and-seek site, or you can volunteer to help … Read more…
Nova – Mystery of the Mega Flood
Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls: these ancient wonders show how nature’s forces have shaped the face of our planet on a vast timescale, how great landmarks are the work of millions of years of slow, imperceptible erosion by … Read more…
Waning Pleistocene Ice Sheet Affected Megaflood Paths and Local Shorelines
Have you ever thought about the how the weight of the ice-age Cordilleran ice sheet might affect the underlying Earth’s crust. There is strong evidence that the crust was depressed hundreds of feet beneath the ice, and since the crust … Read more…
Asteroid That Decimated the Dinosaurs May Have Struck in Spring
Spring may have been when a roughly seven-mile-wide asteroid struck the Earth, immediately triggering the mass extinction that would wipe out 76 percent of known species. That key piece of timing doesn’t come from dinosaurs, but from the fish that … Read more…
Earth Appears to Have a 27.5-Million-Year ‘Heartbeat’
Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle in geological events for a long time. A recent analysis on the ages of 89 well-understood geological events from the past 260 million years show a catastrophic 27.5 million year pulse in eight … Read more…
Global Human Migration Paths and Timing
There is considerable controversy regarding when humans first migrated into the Americas and whether they might have been in the local area during any of the Ice Age Floods. This 2016 video, produced by reputable sources, doesn’t answer that question, … Read more…
Indigenous Flood Stories from 14,000 Years Ago
On October 7th at Chief Timothy Park near Clarkston, WA at the latest Confluence Story Gathering, Thomas Morning Owl (Umatilla tribe) noted there are indigenous people’s stories of massive floods going back to 14,000 years ago. While he didn’t elaborate, … Read more…
“Hiding in Plain Sight”
Millions of people who visit and pass through the Gorge each year don’t realize the scope of the cataclysmic stories behind the stunning and tranquil beauty they are surrounded by. The Spring 2019 edition of The Gorge Magazine (page 50) … Read more…
Glacial Lake Missoula
This feature-filled video by Tom Foster and Nick Zentner explores the evidence for Glacial Lake Missoula, and provides a treasure trove of places to visit and sights to see when you plan your field trip to the area. Read more...
Missoula Flood Rhythmites
Lake Missoula filled many times and emptied catastrophically in many Missoula Floods. Rhythmite sequences [a series of repeated beds of similar origin] at numerous localities provide this evidence: slack-water rhythmites in backflooded tributary valleys below the dam indicate multiple floods, … Read more…
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost finished his poem “The Road Not Taken” with this verse: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has … Read more…
DECIPHERING THE CHANNELED SCABLANDS FIELD WORK CONTINUES
In August, Scott David, a postdoctoral researcher and Karin Lehnigk, a 2nd year PhD candidate from the University of Massachusetts visited the scablands for a week to do field studies. Karin was in search of granite erratics. Samples of these … Read more…
Ice Age Floods – Giant Current Ripples
Check out this 2-Minute Geology expedition with Nick Zentner and Tom Foster exploring the Giant Current Ripples at West Bar and Camas Prairie. Ice age floodwater 650 feet deep – moving at 65 miles per hour – left Giant Current … Read more…
WA-DNR Website Features Phenomenal LIDAR Images
Washington State Geological Survey is collecting, analyzing, and publicly distributing detailed information about our state’s geology using the best available technology – LIDAR – an acronym for Light Detection And Ranging. The main focus of this new push for LIDAR collection … Read more…
Ice Age Floods Story Map – WA Geol. Survey
The Washington Geological Survery (WGS) has produced a story map highlighting the ice-age floods that shaped the landscape of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It tells the story of cataclysmic outburst floods that shaped the landscape of the Pacific Northwest during … Read more…
WA Geology Releases Stunning Lidar Images
The Washington Geological Survey (WGS) has released 50 high-resolution lidar-derived images of the State’s geology and geomorphology through the Washington State DNR’s Flickr page. The images are available in 16:9 format (7,200 x 4,050 pixels) and 4:3 format (7,200 x … Read more…
Columbia Gorge Geology in 22:22 Minutes
This video by Tom Foster and Nick Zentner about the Columbia River Gorge features an incredible variety of geology and human history as it slices through the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. The Columbia River Basalts, the Missoula Floods, … Read more…
THE GRAND COULEE – A Floods Poem
THE GRAND COULEE Older than legends, Younger than mountains, The earth remembers The Great Inland Sea. And that Sea emptied In torrential fury Never imagined Even in dreams. Down through the canyons, Flood of all rivers Carving the coulees Time, … Read more…
Hydraulic Modeling of a Missoula Flood
Chris Goodell’s 1-hour video presentation of his Ice Age Flood hydraulic modeling is both enlightening and thought provoking. Chris is a hydraulic modeling professional for Kleinschmidt Group, whose personal interest in the Ice Age Floods phenomenon led him to privately … Read more…
What’s beneath our feet?
“Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the World Below” plumbs the depths of the question, “What’s beneath our feet?” through maps, images and archaeological artifacts. The exhibition explores nearly 400 years of maps and objects in an attempt to find out why … Read more…
Mammoth and Horse DNA Rewrite Ice Age Extinctions
New research reveals the ancient animals survived some 8,000 years later than previously thought Frozen soil samples collected around a decade ago are rewriting our understanding of iconic Ice Age animals like the woolly mammoth. The soil samples were pulled … Read more…
Did humans witness any megafloods?
Richard Waitt kindly shared his recent paper published June 2016 in Quaternary Research, titled “Megafloods and Clovis cache at Wenatchee, WA.” “It covers the reach mainly from Chelan Falls to below West Bar, tries to tell the story of sequential … Read more…
Bretz and His Floods Story – National Geographic
National Geographic has published an outstanding article, “Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades”, about J Harlan Bretz and his outrageous, fantastical theories of a landscape shaped by huge floods. Most Ice Age Floods aficionados are generally aware … Read more…
Dating the Ice Age Floods
Cosmic rays and the dating of ice age floods was the topic of the annual Spring Fling meeting of the Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter on May 30th. Jorie Clark recently co-authored a paper on the dating of the different flood … Read more…
Grand Coulee Dam Story
1918 story in the Wenatchee World that Bill Dietrich (former Columbian reporter and later with The Seattle Times) says in his wonderful 1995 book Northwest Passage — The Great Columbia River , “is probably the single most famous newspaper article … Read more…
Ice Age Flood Simulation Video
An interesting, 4 minute captioned video from UC Santa Cruz (ingomar200) of a satellite-view computer simulation illustrating flood paths and transient lakes of an Ice Age Flood. The video shows a physics-based computer simulation of the Great Flood from Glacial Lake Missoula … Read more…
The Columbia River Gorge Eagle Creek Fire – Ruin or Renewal?
I’ve found there is huge public interest and concern about the catastrophic effects of the Eagle Creek Fire on the Columbia River Gorge. Pictures of ridgeline after ridgeline enveloped in bright orange fire, trees bursting into towering flames, and the … Read more…
Clastic Dikes Presentation
New Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter member Skye Cooley gave a talk on clastic dikes at our November meeting. Clastic dikes are sand-filled cracks that formed during the Pleistocene in flood-laid deposits across the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, … Read more…
Traveling the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail
In September 2021 my wife and I took a trip to see what was new along the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail and visit some places we did not make it to in our very first trip in 2004. … Read more…
Rethinking Lake Missoula Shorelines
Over 80 hardy souls braved record setting snow and cold to hear U Montana geology professor Jim Sears present “New Thoughts on Lake Missoula Shorelines” at the Montana Natural History Center in Missoula on February 27th. Sears discussed the traditional … Read more…
Beryllium-10 dating of late Pleistocene megafloods and Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreat
Balbas et. al. use cosmogenic beryllium-10 dating methods to further constrain the timing of ice sheet retreat, as well as the potential pathways for megafloods from both Lake Missoula and Lake Columbia. Read this fascinating Geology article summarizing their findings. … Read more…
Exploring the “Volcanic Legacy Scenic By-Way”
VOLCANIC LEGACY SCENIC BYWAY, Ore. — Quartzite mountains. Pumice plains. Cinder cones. Volcanoes are the geology that shaped the Pacific Northwest — and there’s an easy way to view them on an incredible, scenic road trip. This 500-mile Volcanic Legacy Scenic … Read more…
23,000 Year Old Human Footprints Found in New Mexico
Articles in Science Alert and the New York Times report on a well documented age for many sets of human footprints as old as 23,000 years in the ancient lake shore sands of White Sands, New Mexico. “The footprints were … Read more…
Ice Age Flood Animation
This 3:50 minute animation, presented by the Crown Point Country Historical Society, illustrates the growth of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, the damming and back-up of Glacial Lake Missoula, and the progress of an Ice Age Flood through WA and OR … Read more…
Pillow Basalt and Palagonite – Lava Flowing into Water
Pillow basalt and palagonite are the result of lava flowing into water. We have a striking example in the Columbia River Gorge at the intersection of Hwy 30 and US 197 at the east end of The Dalles. This video gives … Read more…
Glacial Lake Missoula – Inspired Classroom Videos
The Glacial Lake Missoula chapter has worked with Inspired Classroom LLC to produce a series of 9 short (3-7 minute) videos exploring different aspects of the Ice Age Floods in the Glacial Lake Missoula area. The entire set is posted … Read more…
Earth’s 27.5-Million-Year ‘Heartbeat’
A new study of ancient geological events suggests that our planet has a slow, steady ‘heartbeat’ of geological activity every 27 million years or so. This pulse of clustered geological events – including volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganizations and … Read more…
Chicxulub Asteroid Tsunami ‘Megaripples’
In what may be the most dramatic mass extinction in Earth’s history, an asteroid impacted our planet 66 million years ago near what is now Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula. The resulting hellscape extinguished 75 percent of then living species … Read more…
West Bar Giant Current Ripples
Massive current ripples and dunes cover the surface of the West Bar pointbar. These unusual, huge current ripples deposited by Ice Age floods in eastern Washington are probably the largest and best example of giant current ripples on Earth. Video … Read more…
Castle Lake Basin
Castle Lake fills a plunge-pool at the base of a 300-ft tall cataract at the opposite (east) end of the Great Cataract Group from Dry Falls, above the east end of Deep Lake. A set of steel ladders put in … Read more…
The Cerutti Mastodon Site – A Bretz Type Controversy of Our Time
In March, while visiting San Diego, I went to the San Diego Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park and toured the remarkable Cerutti Mastodon Site exhibit. This controversial exhibit of a mastodon site is notable for its claim that … Read more…
First Americans Toxic Debate Hobbled Archaeology for Decades
Bluefish Caves directly challenged mainstream scientific thinking. Evidence had long suggested that humans first reached the Americas around 13,000 years ago, when Asian hunters crossed a now submerged landmass known as Beringia, which joined Siberia to Alaska and Yukon during … Read more…
Ice Age Floods’ Features
This is an amazing compilation of extra ordinary photographs that have been expertly labeled to assist the viewer’s understanding of the evidence supporting the creation of the Channelled Scablands in Eastern Washington State, USA. The photographs are panned and zoomed … Read more…
The Great Blade – Bruce Bjornstad Video
“…there were a few double falls each member of which receded at approximately the same rate, so that the island in mid-channel became very much elongated, like a great blade, as the falls receded and the canyons lengthened.” J Harlen … Read more…
Palagonite Maar Near Hood River
Just west of Hood River is a distinctive, short (<500 m) section of stratified orangeish oxidized volcanic tephra and highly fractured lava bombs. This mixture of oxidized volcanic particles ranging down to sub-micrometer sizes mixed with the larger lava bombs is a palagonite tuff. This deposit is … Read more…
Ice Age Floods Touchet Bed Rhythmites
The Touchet Beds at Burlingame Canyon, White Bluffs, and Granger, WA are stacked lake deposits (rhythmites) from temporary lakes that formed as Ice Age Flood waters backed up behind the hydraulic dam constriction at the narrow Wallula Gap. Sediment thicknesses and … Read more…
The Eastern Arm of Glacial Lake Missoula
On September 14th, a beautiful fall day, the little Montana Natural History Center bus set off with a small group to explore nearby Glacial Lake Missoula sites in the rarely visited eastern arm of the lake and go as far … Read more…
The Washington 100 Geotourism Guide
Check out this video about the Washington 100, a cool new geotourism website by the Washington Geological Survey featuring 100 places to experience amazing geology in Washington State. Then explore the website itself at wa100.dnr.wa.gov Read more...
Badger Mountain Landslide Potential?
Q – With all the homes being built on and around Badger mountain in the Tri-Cities, is there any danger of landslides, similar to what is happening at Rattlesnake Hills? I’m unfamiliar with the geology there, and I understand that … Read more…
Smithsonian Article about the Ice Age Floods
We thought our members might be interested in a new article in the Smithsonian Magazine entitled “Devastating Ice Age Floods That Occurred in the Pacific Northwest Fascinate Scientists“. It seems we can’t include the article in this post so we … Read more…
Model for a Missoula Flood
ICYMI (in case you missed it) — Floodwaters rise more than 1,000 feet as they slam into the Columbia River Gorge from the east. The torrent blasts through the narrows at 60 mph, carrying truck-size boulders and house-size icebergs. Reaching … Read more…
Ice Age Floods’ Eye Candy
Check out Bruce Bjornstad’s Ice Age Floodscapes YouTube channel. A growing library of surreal aerial video and pics of other-worldly megaflood features.These drone videos and images that can only be achieved and appreiciated from close range in the air give a unique … Read more…
First People in the Americas – When? How?
When and how did the first people come to the Americas? The conventional story says that the earliest settlers came via Siberia, crossing the now-defunct Bering land bridge on foot and trekking through Canada when an ice-free corridor opened up … Read more…
Grant’s Getaways – Oregon’s Erratic Rocks
This episode of Grant’s Getaways features Lower Columbia President Rick Thompson and the Floods-borne erratics of the Willamette Valley Read more...
Oral/Pictorial Video History of the Palouse Area
This 1/2-hour video begins with the Ice Age Floods impact on the Palouse area, then goes on with a fascinating oral and pictorial history of the area. The video was produced by Mortimore Productions for the Whitman County Library with … Read more…
First Peoples Ice-Free Corridor Migration to Americas Reexamined
Analysis of how long erratics have been exposed on ice-free ground in the hypothesized “Late Pleistocene ice-free corridor migration route” suggests that route was not fully open until about 13,800 years ago, and the ice sheets “may have been 1,500 … Read more…
Glacial Lake Missoula – A Portrait
In this video Tom Davis flies you back some 13,000 years ago to see and hear what the landscape of Glacial Lake Missoula might have looked and sounded like. A virtual recreation of the magical ice-age lake and its catastrophic … Read more…