Missoula floods

The Missoula floods (also known as the Spokane floods, the Bretz floods, or Bretz's floods) were a series of cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across the area that would become eastern Washington, northern Idaho and northern Oregon, 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.

Early flood stories and postulates Native American flood stories have been passed on for millennia and may have been inspired by firsthand witnesses of the ancient megafloods. The Kalapuya people described an atswin (flood) in the story of "Panther, Coyote, Whale’s Daughter, The Flood, Obtaining the Fire". Evidence also comes from local topographic naming. The Sahaptin name given to the Rattlesnake Ridge near Hanford, Washington is Laliik, which translates as "stands above the water". Yet, there is no water around Rattlesnake Ridge today. Some early explorers, military, local teachers and scientists had from the beginning ascribed the Scablands to extensive flows of water. Probably the two most germane to the flood story are the 1882 expedition of Lt. Thomas William Symons (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) for naming glacial Lake Lewis and the 1885 explorations of T.C. Chamberlin for identifying the source of the floodwater as Glacial Lake Missoula. In March 1917, Thomas Bonser wrote an article for The Spokesman-Review about pre-historic Spokane, in which he accurately described what is now called Glacial Lake Columbia. In 1910, J. Pardee published a paper that identified Glacial Lake Missoula. Thomas Large, Alonzo Pearl Troth, Thomas Bonser, Joseph McMacken, and others conducted fieldwork in and around Spokane that led to a deeper understanding of the local geology and paleobotany. Their work made the previous existence of a giant lake in that area widely known not only to scientists, but also to the general public. Thomas Large reported in 1922 his own observations regarding glaciations and possible floods in Science and gave the hypothetical lake the name Lake Spokane.

Flood estimates These floods have been researched since the 1920s. During the last deglaciation that followed the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, geologists estimate that a cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake lasted an average of 55 years and that the floods occurred dozens of times over the 2,000 years between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Jim O'Connor and Spain's Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales scientist Gerardo Benito have found evidence of at least twenty-five massive floods, the largest discharging about 10 cubic kilometers per hour (2.7 million m³/s, 13 times that of the Amazon River). Alternate estimates for the peak flow rate of the largest flood range up to 17 cubic kilometers per hour. The maximum flow speed approached 36 meters/second (130 km/h or 80 mph). Within the Columbia River drainage basin, detailed investigation of the Missoula floods' glaciofluvial deposits, informally known as the Hanford formation, has documented the presence of Middle and Early Pleistocene Missoula flood deposits within the Othello Channels, Columbia River Gorge, Channeled Scabland, Quincy Basin, Pasco Basin, and the Walla Walla Valley. Based on the presence of multiple interglacial calcretes interbedded with flood deposits, magnetostratigraphy, optically stimulated luminescence dating, and unconformity truncated clastic dikes, it has been estimated that the oldest of the Pleistocene Missoula floods happened before 1.5 million years ago. Because of the fragmentary nature of older glaciofluvial deposits, which have been largely removed by subsequent Missoula floods, within the Hanford formation, the exact number of older Missoula floods, which are known as ancient cataclysmic floods, that occurred during the Pleistocene cannot be estimated with any confidence.

Flood hypothesis proposed

Geologist J Harlen Bretz first recognized evidence of the catastrophic floods, which he called the Spokane floods, in the 1920s. He was researching the Channeled Scablands in Eastern Washington, the Columbia Gorge, and the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Beginning in the summer of 1922, Bretz conducted field research on the Columbia River Plateau for the next seven years. He had been interested in unusual erosion features in the area since 1910 after seeing a newly published topographic map of the Potholes Cataract. Bretz coined the term Channeled Scablands in 1923 to refer to the area near the Grand Coulee, where massive erosion had cut through basalt deposits. Bretz published a paper in 1923 arguing that the Channeled Scablands in Eastern Washington were caused by massive flooding in the distant past. Bretz's view, which was seen as arguing for a catastrophic explanation of the geology, ran against the prevailing view of uniformitarianism, and Bretz's views were initially disregarded. The Geological Society of Washington, D.C., invited the young Bretz to present his previously published research at a January 12, 1927, meeting where several other geologists presented competing theories. Another geologist at the meeting, J.T. Pardee, had worked with Bretz and had evidence of an ancient glacial lake that lent credence to Bretz's theories. Bretz defended his theories, which kicked off an acrimonious 40-year debate over the origin of the Scablands. Both Pardee and Bretz continued their research over the next 30 years, collecting and analyzing evidence that led them to identify Lake Missoula as the source of the Spokane flood and creator of the channeled scablands. After Pardee studied the canyon of the Flathead River, he estimated that flood waters above 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) would be required to roll the largest of the boulders moved by the flood. He estimated the water flow was 9 cubic miles per hour (38 km3/h), more than the combined flow of every river in the world. More recent estimates place the flow rate at ten times the flow of all current rivers combined. The Missoula floods have also been referred to as the Bretz floods in honor of Bretz.

Flood initiation

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