Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington

Bomber_12th

Bomber_12th

SOH-CM-2023
Here is a tour of a selection of sites within the Channeled Scablands region of eastern Washington. Throughout this large area one can see the dramatic scarring left behind by the Great Missoula Floods which ended about 12,000 years ago, near to the end of the Ice Age. For this flight I started out at Wenatchee, then flew south along the Columbia River to the site of Potholes Coulee, then east over to Moses Lake and the Potholes State Park, then north up to Dry Falls, just south of Upper Grand Coulee. Some sites I didn't get to, but are also located nearby, include Crater Coulee and French Coulee.

Starting off the screenshots over the Columbia River, south of Wenatchee, and with the Rock Island Creek at the right.



The Rock Island Dam can be seen here.







These enormous ripple patterns were left behind by the flood waters. Imagine the ripples you see at the beach, but on a massive scale.



Nearing Potholes Coulee, the swirling erosion here from the flood waters is easy to see.

 
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Here is Potholes Coulee, one of the most impressive and my favorite of the sites. As the water from the floods receded, this became the site of enormous waterfalls. The force of the water, combined with swirling vortexes, carved the pothole impressions (filled with water) at the base of the prehistoric falls.









After a few circuits, heading east toward Moses Lake.



The floods covered this region, washing everything away, and the wall of water is said to have topped the Saddle Mountains which can be seen in the background of this shot.

 
Around the southern end of Moses Lake is the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge and Potholes State Park. Here can also be seen the scarring left behind by the floods, with deep channels and pothole features.







 
Although not related to the Missoula Floods, I had to include some screenshots of the really interesting looking mud flats and sand dunes around Moses Lake.









Then it was onto a flyover of Grant County International Airport, heading north. A giant "Pac-Man" can also be seen here. : )



A very busy airport by the looks of it.

 
Heading north toward Soap Lake.



Passing over Little Soap Lake, one of a string of lakes formed by the Missoula Floods.



More signs of water erosion, with channels and potholes left by the floods, can be seen a few hundred feet above present-day Lake Lenore.



This shot is over the top of Dry Coulee and looking back at Lake Lenore and the path the flood waters took, flowing south from Upper Grand Coulee.



Here is Jasper Canyon, branching off with the flow of the flood waters.

 
Finally, here are some shots of Dry Falls State Park and Heritage Area, just south of Upper Grand Coulee, left behind as the last of the Missoula flood waters receded. 10-times larger than Niagara Falls, it would be the largest water fall in the world if water still flowed over its cliffs.



 
Thanks for the history lesson and beatifull pictures. Going to learn a little more about those floods, neve heard about before.
Best regards
 
Geology was always my favorite of the sciences, as it more often than not has a strong element of history involved. Lake Missoula was a glacial lake formed from melt water during the last ice age, that was dammed on one end by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet that stretched down from Canada. When that dam of ice would brake, it would release a massive flow of water - some have estimated that at the moment the dam broke, it would have released water at a rate of as much as 600 million cubic feet a second. Geologists have found evidence that this likely happened many times over during a 2,000 year period at the end of the ice age. Each time the water was released, the ice dam would eventually form again and the whole process would be repeated.

Ryan, I actually have been playing the sim now at 70% 4K instead (though I do miss the extra bit of quality full 4K offers). At full 4K, my RTX 2080 was routinely running at 82-degrees Celsius, even with the fans running 100% (same experience with P3Dv5). Some say this is fine/normal for the card with high-GPU use, and others say that you don't want to be running it that hot every day. Fortunately, running at 70% 4K, the temps usually stay in the mid-60's instead.
 
Hey All,

Nice images!

The Missoula floods are a favorite subject of mine. I've been over a large portion of the country scoured by those floods but never seen it from the air like that. Harlan Bretz had amazing insight to come up with the theory of the floods at the time.

Can you imagine being one of the "advanced civilization" members that some think were in north america long long long ago an seeing those walls of water coming at you across Washington?

I have my own thoughts on the floods an wonder if those floods moved gold into places that would perhaps not likely been prospected in the last few hundred years. What formations might contain some gold? Hmmm I do intend to look/detect when I have time since I do have have a couple ideas to check out.

The other subject that fascinates me is that apparently the Colorado River once drained into Davis strait off the west coast of Greenland as sediments matching western Colorado rocks an minerals have been found off the coast of Maine.

This stuff is fascinating - again thanks for the images.

-Ed-
 
Yes, it is incredible to think that people were living here at the time and could have witnessed that. Of course for anyone that happened to be living in the path of the floods, there would be no evidence left for their being there.

Here in Minnesota, along the banks of rivers such as the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix, you can see bluffs along the edges that are significantly larger and more expanded than the current rivers, which points directly to the massive flows of glacial melt water that once cut those channels as the glaciers receded. At Interstate State Park along the St. Croix River in Taylors Falls, MN, you can also see glacial potholes there too. They were formed by large volumes of turbulent water from the glacial melt, where boulders/rocks that were caught up in vortexes drilled deep holes into the ground.
 
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