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An hour ­by­hour simulation of the Missoula floods. 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 truck­size boulders and house ­size icebergs. Reaching Portland, water loaded with gravel and dirt roils to a depth of 400 feet, leaving tiny islands at the summits of Mount Tabor and Rocky Butte. Memorial Service for Walt
Ratterman Geologists have spent decades piecing together evidence to tell the story of the great Missoula floods that reshaped much of Oregon and Washington between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago. Entertainment Photos Living Photos Upload your photos MORE PHOTOS »
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Now scientists have found a way to travel back in time to watch the megafloods unfold, in a virtual bird's eye view. Their computer simulation displays the likely timing and play ­by­play action, starting with the collapse of an ice dam and outpouring of a lake 200 miles across and 2,100 feet deep. The computer model, developed by Roger Denlinger with the U.S. Geological Survey in Vancouver and Colorado ­based geophysicist Daniel O'Connell, is filling gaps in scientific explanations of the floods and the baffling landforms they left, including the fabled Channeled Scablands ­­ scars hundreds of miles long cut into the bedrock of eastern Washington and visible from outer space. The simulations also may help settle a lingering scientific controversy about what caused the repeating ice ­age catastrophes. 110 comments
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"It's just really powerful visualization that gives a sense of the scale of the floods, how they came down through the channel system and backed up the big tributary valleys," said Jim O'Connor, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Portland who has written extensively on the Missoula floods. He said the modeling work provides the first "really good information" on the timing of events. Boston 96, Portland 76: Blazers blown out by Celtics in Marcus Camby's debut Black experience propels anger in police shooting of Aaron Campbell Oregon football: Kiko Alonso cited for DUII Demonstrators gather in downtown Portland to protest Campbell shooting, march to PSU Look out former Oregonians, Washington is going after rogue license plates Got something to say? »
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During the last ice age, a continent ­spanning ice sheet built from massively expanded glaciers descended from the Canadian Rocky Mountains to reach deep into Washington, Idaho and Montana. Glacial Lake Missoula formed behind a miles­long dam of ice across what is now the valley of the Clark Fork and Pend Oreille rivers running from Montana to northeast Washington. The dam formed and collapsed dozens of times over a span of three thousand years. Learn more | Read FAQs | Contact us
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During the last ice age, a continent ­spanning ice sheet built from massively expanded glaciers descended from the Canadian Rocky Mountains to reach deep into Washington, Idaho and Montana. Glacial Lake Missoula formed behind a miles­long dam of ice across what is now the valley of the Clark Fork and Pend Oreille rivers running from Montana to northeast Washington. The dam formed and collapsed dozens of times over a span of three thousand years. Learn more | Read FAQs | Contact us
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In the simulation of one of the largest possible floods, raging water quickly overwhelms the hills near Spokane and races overland to the south and west. The intense, overland flows carve the miles ­long scars of the scablands between Spokane and Pasco, Wash. Thirty­eight hours later, swirling, mud­darkened waters converge at the narrowing of the Columbia at Wallula Gap, where the backed ­up flow rises 850 feet above river level (1,150 feet above sea level). An immense volume of water blasts through the narrows at fire ­hose velocity. Flow exceeds 1.3 billion gallons per second ­­ a thousand times greater than the Columbia's average flows today. Lake Missoula's water, all 550 cubic miles of it, drains in 55 hours ­­ less than three days ­­ according to the model. At that time, the flood surge peaks in the Columbia Gorge at The Dalles, rising 950 feet above river level (1,000 feet above sea level), spilling over the gorge walls in places, and flooding the valleys of tributaries for miles upstream. Inundation of the Willamette Valley peaks on the seventh day after dam burst, in the simulation. Flooding reaches as far south as Eugene. Loaded with mud and gravel, the flood dumps sediment across the entire valley. Repeated floods build a layer 100 feet thick in Woodburn. Such a vast inundation, far greater than anything ever witnessed in historical time, seemed impossible to geologists in the 1920s, when J Harlen Bretz proposed that the scablands resulted from a catastrophic flood, not eons of gradual erosion. The idea didn't gain mainstream acceptance until the 1960s. Since then, geologists have found evidence that Lake Missoula emptied catastrophically dozens of times during the last ice age. But controversy persists. A few scientists assert that the cataclysmic floods must have had multiple sources, not just an outburst from Lake Missoula. John Shaw of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, for instance, has proposed that an enormous reservoir beneath the ice sheet over much of central British Columbia boosted the flooding. The new simulation suggests that discharge from Lake Missoula alone would have been powerful enough. The simulated flood reaches peak stages all along its route that match the evidence visible today in sediment, with one big exception: At Wallula Gap, water levels in the simulation fell short by as much as 130 feet. "It's pretty clear, if Lake Missoula is enough to hit all the other high water marks, you don't need another source of water," Denlinger said. Calculating the convoluted paths of such a massive flood requires an immense amount of number crunching. Simulating one flood requires more than 8 months of computer time, Denlinger said. But the computer simulation isn't likely to end the debate. The fact that it can't reproduce the maximum flooding at Wallula Gap leaves room for doubts. And some experts say there is direct evidence for an additional source of flood waters from beneath the ice sheet that covered the Okanagan Valley. "It is conceivable that other valleys in southern British Columbia contributed water to the scablands but the field evidence necessary to test these possibilities has not been fully documented," said earth scientist Jerome­Etienne Lesemann at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. "There are a number of unanswered questions," he said. "That makes the whole Channeled Scablands story a really interesting and intriguing geological puzzle." ­­ Joe Rojas­Burke Recommend (0)
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Oldest comments are shown first. Show newest comments first Posted by dabeaver
February 20, 2010, 11:42AM
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Posted by dabeaver
February 20, 2010, 11:42AM
Global warming at it's earliest? Too many indians having big bonfires? News at 11.
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Posted by imbeciles
February 20, 2010, 11:49AM
These had to be man caused climate changing events because we can now simulate and measure them. It must have been the early Europeans and Africans who caused this disaster. I think we should go to the UN and ask for relief from those nations now in existence for their ancestors poor care of mother earth.
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Posted by jexpat
February 21, 2010, 4:25AM
Scientific illiteracy and wit FAIL on display again...
One would think that people would want to stop embarrassing themselves by putting their stupidity on display time and time again ­ but apparantly not. Inappropriate comment? Alert us.
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Posted by JohnBarleycorn
February 21, 2010, 7:53AM
Willful stupidity is a religion among the anti­science, anti­
environment dimwits who deny global climate change. These are the same idiots who deny evolution. Soon they'll start making whiny noises about how the theory of gravity is some leftist, UN conspiracy.
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Posted by debaser12
February 20, 2010, 12:56PM
I don't think people realize just how impacting this geological event was on our landscape.
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Posted by dabeaver
February 20, 2010, 1:30PM
My point was that we must have caused it, because you know man must have caused that ice dam to break. I do very much understand what that event did to change the landscape of our region. Must have been impressive. Would like to have seen it from a very high vantage point.
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My point was that we must have caused it, because you know man must have caused that ice dam to break. I do very much understand what that event did to change the landscape of our region. Must have been impressive. Would like to have seen it from a very high vantage point.
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Posted by skygreen
February 20, 2010, 3:56PM
In addition to this, there is the more recent event ­­The blockade of the Columbia @ Cascade Locks caused by a catastrophic 300 yr quake off the Oregon Coast. The rupture of this dam by the Columbia also added to the sediment deposition in the Portland area. I wonder if the geologists have this sediment layer figured into their calculations? Inappropriate comment? Alert us.
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Posted by JohnBarleycorn
February 21, 2010, 7:59AM
This was a relatively small event compared to the Missoula floods. It also happened thousands of years later, so I doubt whatever sedimentation it may have left behind was considered in the scientists' calculations.
Pretty cool map in this article. The Missoula floods played an important role in the development of geology as a science (uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism), nice to see folks are still working on understanding them.
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Posted by ascot
February 21, 2010, 8:31AM
One thing that must be difficult to simulate is the blocking effect of the millions of trees that must have been uprooted by the leading edge of the flood.
There were three significant gaps ­ Wallula, Crown Point, and Kalama. The book, "Cataclysms on the Columbia", presents a good description of the floods and the deductive processes that led to their discovery. Also, OPB had an interesting presentation regarding the Bretz floods a few years ago. Inappropriate comment? Alert us.
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Posted by tonyko99
February 21, 2010, 12:10PM
One thing to keep in mind and consider, how little man affects anything, if at all. Who knows, maybe an earthquake will open the earth and divert the Columbia in such a way we would never imagine? What to do then, if anything? Indian and Japanese history tells of a huge tsunami on the OR coast hundreds of years ago. What is next? I won't be waiting for who to blame...................
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