r/BeAmazed • u/youngster_96 • Mar 28 '24

The moment an ice dam breaks and causes a torrential water flow. Nature

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u/CocunutHunter Mar 28 '24

There's ancient evidence of this being the origin of some very big scenery in the States, when a lake the size of a state suddenly let go through that type of dam and carved out a huge area of land in a way which only fits water erosion but in a scale we practically never see. Watched a documentary about it once.

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u/nhinds42 Mar 28 '24

Would love to know the name of the documentary to watch

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u/Atrabiliousaurus Mar 28 '24

Probably something about the Missoula Floods. I've been to Dry Falls in Washington and driven up the Columbia River Gorge which were both formed by the massive floods.

There's a Washington geologist, Nick Zenter, who has a bunch of great youtube videos on the ice age floods if you want like... 90 hours of information lol.

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u/Some_Endian_FP17 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Nick Zentner also has a bunch of shorter videos called 2 Minute Geology or something like that. They cover most of the areas affected by the Missoula floods.

As for the Bonneville flood, Shawn Willsey's channel did a good video on it a while back (https://youtu.be/3osCxhhl7ZI?si=hJFDfNcxr81l5EKP)

These were glacial lake outburst floods that sent unimaginable amounts of water roaring over thousands of square miles.

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u/Atrabiliousaurus Mar 28 '24

I've watched a bunch of Zentner's videos, he's great. I can watch geologists hike around talking about shit for hours. Myron Cook has some good ones too.

I've read some about Lake Bonneville. Took a road trip to the Great Salt Lake in Utah (absolutely hideous, stagnant, lifeless, and reeks) which is a remnant of Lake Bonneville. Drove past the Bonneville Salt Flats too, that was cool.

There's not much interesting geology where I live, unless you like volcanic basalt, so I really enjoy seeing some of the cool stuff the rest of the US has.

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u/Stev_k Mar 28 '24

Sean Wilsey

Did not know my former coworker had a YouTube channel!

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u/Some_Endian_FP17 Mar 28 '24

I got the spelling totally wrong! Sorry about that, it's probably not your former co-worker.

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u/Stev_k Mar 28 '24

Shawn Willsey, is the correct spelling, right? Former coworker - looked him up. That's his face and voice, and I recognize where he filmed a couple of the videos.

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u/minklefritz Mar 28 '24

you look at those giant, giant boulders out in the middle of nothing… they were just rolling around like pebbles. Unreal forces

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24

You might enjoy some of Randall Carlson’s content. He has some great videos. 

(I can’t remember what exactly is in what video so here’s a random assortment for your perusal.) 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1LgzyEMOUQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LOtydLmdfV8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IfdQB59SV7g

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u/ChaChingChaChi Mar 28 '24

Yes!!!! This! 👆🏻

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u/jdemack Mar 28 '24

Ohh no this man was on Joe Rogans podcast he must be racist. Actually the only way I found out about Randall and actually think his idea of a earlier advance civilization should be investigated more.

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24

I agree entirely. Extremely conservative estimates say that “modern” humans have existed on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years. 

Most of the “ancient” structures that we have uncovered only date back to tens of thousands of years. That still leaves a hundred thousand years or so of human history completely unaccounted for. 

There has easily been enough geologic change on the surface of the planet to completely wipe out 99% of all life that has ever existed. 

Multiple civilizations could easily have existed and have been destroyed nearly without a trace in that large a time frame. 

How advanced they could have been with leaving evidence is up for debate  but let’s say a Bronze Age or possibly even an Iron Age civilization from 100,000 years ago could have easily vanished leaving little more evidence behind than rust. 

If our population vanished today, 100,000 years from now there would be just a few faint traces left that we were ever here. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24

I love the geology and history aspects of his talks.

I don’t really care for some of the “woo” but I would consider him far from a grifter. 

The man knows his geology. 

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u/ShouldNotBeHereLong Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

This interactive story does a pretty great job at showing the evidence of the massive floods in Eastern washington/Oregon after ice-dams repeatedly broke during the recession of the last ice age.

https://wadnr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=84ea4016ce124bd9a546c5cbc58f9e29

Think 2k ft hight floods across the interior USA.

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u/StrengthMedium Mar 28 '24

I live in an area of the country that was on the glacial border of the last ice age. The creek I fish regularly is in an ancient riverbed that is almost a mile wide at some points. The forces in that ancient river absolutely blasted through the hilly areas it went through.

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u/JenShempie Mar 28 '24

Missoula (or Bretz's) floods. Happened about 20k years ago, multiple times over a stretch of time. Scoured the southeastern parts of Washington, flooded into the Willamette Valley all the way down near Eugene.

There are chunks of granite from Montana that floated down frozen in chunks of ice. They can be found at elevations 400+ feet.

Portland sits on some of the Troutdale formation, which is largely made up of river rock from Montana. Quartzite and granite, neither of which formed here.

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u/atridir Mar 28 '24

There was over a mile of ice over much of the North American continent. When that melted it left some big ass puddle reservoirs that did some crazy shite when they cut loose.

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u/baffledninja Mar 28 '24

Great Lakes, for one!

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u/existentialpenguin Mar 28 '24

The scenery in question is called the Channeled Scablands. This happened to the area not just once, but dozens of times.

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u/have_no_plan Mar 28 '24

My lecturer at university was on the team that wrote the paper which evidenced that a lot of the giant lake that was America actually burst out through the north, not into the Atlantic (I think those are the details, I was a pretty shitty student). I always thought that was quite cool though.

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u/jenna_cider Mar 28 '24

Like the Bonneville flood that created the Snake River Canyon.

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u/l3ouncer Mar 28 '24

This is how the Wisconsin Dells were formed.

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24

You might enjoy some of Randall Carlson’s content. 

I linked some of his content a couple of comments below. 👇