Ice Age Floods, Lake Missoula, Bonneville Flood and the Columbia River Basalts
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 Northwest is truly Disneyland for Geologists!
Tom Foster (HUGEfloods.com) and Nick Zentner (Central Washington University) have been hiking together in eastern Washington for years. The result? A series of short videos that showcase geological wonders in the Pacific Northwest.
This 16-minute video - Huge Floods in the Pacific Northwest - offers an introductory overview of spectacular geologic events that impacted much of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
The program begins in Lewiston, Idaho where the floods of lava and water are beautifully on display near the mouth of Hells Canyon. Early on, the Columbia River Basalts - eruptions of fluid lava from deep fissures - are featured. The Missoula Floods from Montana and the Bonneville Flood from Utah - the Ice Age Floods - are surveyed at an introductory level. And finally, the interaction between bedrock and fluid dynamics of the floodwater are highlighted through discussion of Ice Age erosional and depositional landforms. Key locations in the Pacific Northwest are featured, including the Snake River Canyon, Grand Coulee, Dry Falls, the Drumheller Channels, Wallula Gap, and the Columbia River Gorge.
More than a dozen ‘2 Minute Geology’ episodes are now available online.
Nick Zentner is easily the best and most captivating teacher of hard sciences that I've ever seen. If anyone had told me, two years ago, that I would get hooked on videos of some guy standing in front of a chalk board, talking about rocks, I'd have told you that you had rocks in your head. Now I am considering going back to school to study geology. Thank you, Nick.
All my Geology Profs were good at Portland State. Rice University had good folks too! Nick seems great too.
@@richardmarty9939 I don't know what it is about geology. It just attracts passionate people. Or at least passionate teachers.
Only yesterday, I discovered these videos, and I am SO IMPRESSED!! Surely I have never seen information and teaching like these on any Nat Geo or BBC programs. Being a trucker, I have passed through many of these areas a dozen times, and yet not knowing how all of this was formed and by what means, until now!! I am a new subscriber gaining more and more knowledge following each and every video. Thank You Nick!👍
Nick is a Pacific Northwest treasure. National treasure in my mind. To find a professor who is willing to share his knowledge with anyone who is interested and have such passion in his heart to do so is a blessing from a higher power.
Although i am coming to the party very late, I am blown away by the information and knowledge that I have learned from Nick. I didn't discover him until two months ago - It has changed the way i look at the world - and i am better because of it. I look forward to learning more about the planet we inhabit. Thank you
Professor Zentner is a fantastic geology professor! I already knew a portion of this, but not nearly as much as after watching this video. I'm once again all fired up on physical, and even historical geology :) Can't wait to start watching more of Professor Zentner's videos again.
Nick you have an incredible mind, most see it as just beautiful earth features, but you bring it to life. At first I saw just mounds of dirt, hills on valley floors, boulders jutting out the landscape in miscellaneous locations, then you come along and give explanations that make so much sense that it is hard to believe these are not obvious to normal eyes. I can't look at these things now and unsee it the way I did before. You are incredible. I want to take you on vacation all over this country just to hear you explain what I am seeing. Your voice, your delivery, your stories of what was happening years ago forms vivid images as you speak of them, my mind can just picture what was happening. I am so glad I found your videos, I think I have seen them all, can't wait for some new ones. Thanks a million, you are a true gem, your students are very lucky.
Thanks for the enthusiastic comments. Very nice to hear that our videos are working for you.
Check out alternative views. They might be enlightening
Hey nick. I think mongo s got a little crush on you. I hope for your sake your secret admirer is a girl. But not jessica walter from. Play misty for me
I use to take my my kids on trips and talk to them about the history of the area we were passing thru. I got teased about it pretty good by the time they were !0 or twelve; You have to be open to information and want to learn. Or they might call you Mr. Wizard
You should have 30 million subscribers! Awesome.
I'm amazed every time I watch this.
Re-watching, and in wonderment anew. We are so lucky to have these. 💗
Well played sir, thank you from Vancity 🇨🇦!
More knowledge here than any news or history channel by FAR! Great work💪
So much that my geology professor at University didn't tell me back in 1966. I was always fascinated by all things ancient, but I ended up being a classically trained musician. Go with your strengths, but never lose interest in your passions! It will make life forever new and fascinating, even when you're old and worn down. I Give my gratitude to this geologist for making this video.
I rewatch your videos on this subject repeatedly. It is so interesting to me.
Didn't know you have this channel, Nick. Will be checking it all out!
I swear.....if Nick had been my teacher/teachers in High School, learning would have been such a pleasure!! I feel cheated. Bravo, Nick!! Keep up the good teaching!! 💕💕
AGREE !! If Geology was a HS Course it would have changed my Career ...and Life !! !! ✅
Thank you. This Appalachia girl, amateur geologist whose teeth were cut on the New and Gully Rivers, is obsessively enamored with the Ice Age Floods here in the Pacific Northwest. You have added appreciably to my understanding to that which I love.
Excellent short video.
I look forward to each and every video👍🏼👏🏼👏🏼♥️thank you professor Nick 👍🏼♥️
Thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos and for explaining these incredible features.
Thanks for watching, Kevin. Nice to hear.
Thank you so much!!! I love your videos. So amazing our planet.
My house is about 300 yards from the impressive deposit in Lewiston from both floods. See it everyday. There was a certain bottle neck at this spot from bonniville. A gravel pit is at this location. And a gap like at wallulla.
In tiny Singapore, where I live, the tallest point is just 163 meters high. It is a granite outcrop said to be about 400 million years old. The fascinating thing is that it sits on top of another layer called norite which is 200 million years younger. If not for this channel I never would have taken an interest in the geology of my own country. Thank you Professor Zentner.
Really interesting!
You do such a good way of describing this complicated history. Thank you. I admire all the people who have studied and recorded this .
I love these so so much !!! Thank you
Imagine Nick as a grandfather teling his cuties these stories at bedtime. Reminds me of PRINCESS BRIDE, a stretch I know, but his stories are just as exciting.
This is so amazing, thank you!
Thanks for watching, Billy!
👍 This is very interesting and informative!
whoa ! whoa ! whoa ! WHOA "!!!!" Thanx Nick ...("WHOA" !!!!!!!***) 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👌
Yes. Thank you. They are wonderful. So much to learn!
Never gets old. I could listen to your lectures all day. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👍🏼❤you have a gift Professor
Thank you, Lynn. Lots more at nickzentner.com
Shared this with family in an email. Got a response from at least one family member who specifically mentioned 'thanks' for sharing this video. This is a well-made video. Could tell it was well thought-out and planned!
What was/is unique about Wallula gap that was able to stop a flood of a magnitude that could carve hundred-foot deep coulees out of basalt?
I'd like to hear Nick's thoughts on the "energy paradox". No thermal heating has been explained that would have been sufficient enough to melt the entire icecap in the time it was melted. With current heating simulations we still should have an ice cap. If this is not explained all the theories of ice dams go right out the window.
Having grown up on the Columbia River and seeing a program about Mr. Bretz, I've been fascinated by the geology of this amazing landscape. Thank you for adding to this knowledge in a most interesting way. You clearly love what you do.
Thanks Carol. Yes, it is interesting material for many of us.
Thank you, Nick for this very informative video. I grew up in The Dalles Oregon and now have a new appreciation for the terrain of eastern Oregon and Washington. (I don't live there now)
Thank you!
Thank you 🙏
Great videos! Very informative.
As a fan of the Lewis and Clark saga, I love to see so many places that are familiar to me. Imagine being the first Americans to see this landscape..!
Fabulous presentation! As a Pennsylvania boy, I sure wish I had a deeper understanding of all that I was seeing while camping out that way many years ago.
Thanks so much. I visited Dry Falls and Grand Coulee this weekend, having never previously known of these floods. Fascinating stuff!
Thanks Matt. Pretty wild stuff, right?
As I watch these type videos I imagine the roar and rumble of the floods. I've seen some small scale floods (my hometown creek during the spring thaw, no more than twenty feet wide and twelve feet deep) and they can make some noise! Imagine being a large bird gliding over these areas amidst any one of these dynamic floods events. That would be cool!
Really well done. Informative and well-organized.
Yes! I am old enough to remember the Evel Knievel jump!
i learned an amazing amount from this and... I saw some breathtaking (and having seen the explanations) fascinating landscapes
Great work!!! Keep it up.
Thanks Mark!!!
I LOVE THIS VIDEO👍👍👍👍
im really sad that this channel hasn't had an upload in 7 years :(
Several years ago I was fortunate to view a Patrick Stewart narrated doc about the scrublands that you just featured, described on the Science, Discovery, or Nat Geo channel. Would like to view it again. Years ago when I crossed the Missouri River @ Mobridge, SD, facing West, I had something of an existential experience. Thank you for yours, also.
This video is causing me to miss summertime road trips in the Jeep with the top off. Next time I'm in the over there I will have a better idea what I am looking at. We live in such a dynamic area.
Road trips are the best!
Cool stuff! Enjoyed that.
These are really interesting videos. I learn something new every time I watch one. Thanks. I always thought Washington State was boring...but wait! I can't wait to learn more.
Lol we have rainforests, grasslands, mountains, beaches, deserts, etc in Washington
I lived in Utah and knew all about Bonneville. Now I live 500 feet from the banks of Clark Fork in Plains, MT - and learning even more of flood history. The glacial waters have captured me it seems. Thanks for the video production, the geology, the history and the share.
Thanks for the comments, Nate.
I like to play devil's advocate most of the time but I have no ammunition! This was a wonderful video and the topic was something I was really really interested in. Thank you for the presentation and the information sir
Mr. Zentner, this was, and is, an excellent video. A very great job indeed. Sir, thank you very much, for your hard work in the production of this great presentation.
Thanks Oscar. Tom Foster at hugefloods.com deserves all of the credit for these programs.
Beautiful country .I hope to visit it one day.
Make sure that you drop in for a visit in Ellensburg!
That was so awesome thank ❤️
Where in Lewiston can you see the layers of basalt, Bonneville, and Lewiston? I want to see IRL! Thank you for teaching freely. I find all of this so fascinating!
Very informative for this geology buff newly arrived in Hayden, ID from San Diego. Had I seen a video like this when I was in high school (in the 1960s) or early college I would have continued as a geology major. Instead I became a math major with grad school in computer science and worked on military aircraft systems. But on my daily walks I see the basalts, the Belt group limestones, and I'm always on the look out for erratics. Thanks for making the effort to do these videos.
Welcome to the Northwest. Thanks for watching these.
You are so lucky to have escaped S.D. for such greener pastures. My guess is you don't miss the 5 & 805 merge, The lovely congestion during your commute on either the 52, 15, 56 0r 78.....If only I could be so lucky.
I love this guy. His videos are so interesting.
Loved it, thank you ......... 16 minutes well spent.
Nice to hear. Thanks.
Dr. Zentner, you're my favorite geologist. I enjoy your lectures tremendously. I wonder if you have looked at the geology of the northern half of Africa. It has a very similar appearance to the Pacific Northwest Missoula flood scars. It's very interesting. The Ricat Structure, which appears to me to be a volcanic feature, may hold clues to what was going on. It seems to me, some incredible pressures from below the surface may have caused water to rise through the strata and flood the whole land. Since I am given to understand there were no glaciers there, and since it is now desert, I keep thinking of a line from ancient scripture. "The fountains of the deep broke open..."
Great video! This really helped me on a class project. Thank you.
+Henry Jones Happy we could help, Henry.
Thanks for a great vid!! Wonder what sort of trigger was the cause for the floods in the highlands of Peru and Egypt. Please, do you have any theories about those?
Awesome 👏 Love it
These videos are so awe inspiring! Thank-you for doing this! And, I'd like a ride in that ultralight...!
Thank you, Deborah! Nice to hear that these videos are working for you.
Fascinating
After watching several of the video's, I see many of the same types of features at other sites in the West. How can I get you to look at other areas to confirm my observations???
Always happy to see Dr. Zentners work in my sub box.
Nice comment, Stubbs. Thanks.
Great video presentation.
Thanks Donald!
I love this, I eat it up like candy.
the 16 minute geologist strikes again... great pics and stories...
Thanks Judson. It's all Tom Foster - his photos, his vision...I just supply the words.
Thank you! The more I get to learn about my home state of Washington the better!
Have you an Idaho counterpart!
@@katherinejones850 I guess I do now 😉 I was raised in Bellingham, but always made time to go to Eastern Washington and travel the Columbia River whenever possible.
Fantastic information! I built a golf course in Oregon City and drilled two 1000ft wells for irrigation. Each time we pulled up wood at the 500 foot level. The area was also full of big round rocks that obviously came in from a flood. Was this a result of the Missoula floods or the Bonneville flood?
Oh, so jealous that Washington has you...sigh. You bring geology to life. --- A fan from SE Oregon.
you’re doing a great thing here! Quality education
Thanks a nice comment. Thank you!
How does the ice keep growing and lake missoula is filling up at the same time
On the Tammany bar part of your video bout midway through you forgot to mention that the Missoula floods didn't just take one route to get down the Columbia river system. In fact some of it came down the Clark Fork, some down the Spokane River and across what is now the Rathdrum Prairie with the aquifer beneath it, and some came down the Palouse river and helped to form Palouse falls, that part of the floods hit a bluff across the Snake river from the mouth of the Palouse and backed up into Lewiston Idaho over 600 feet in depth. that is what caused the deposits you see presently in the Tammany bar. Plus I live less than a mile or two north of said Tammany bar. I learned this stuff in school. So please update.
Lifetime PNW resident and since I've learned about them a few years ago I've claimed. "If I had a 1 trip time machine I want to go see a Missoula flood." Watching the huge ice dam break and release a torrent. Then going down to see so much water rip through the Columbia River gorge while standing on the top of those cliffs/plateaus would be so amazing. I didn't know of the Bonneville flood until this video just now and that sounds wild too. RIP to the native peoples and animals that were caught unawares by them though. Must have been catastrophic.
I harbor the exact same desire. Man, would that be something to see!! I live in Oregon and marvel at the Columbia River gorge every time I'm there.
Great video! I assume the earth has the same amount of water today as it did back then since we don’t loose materials to space. Where is all that water (ice) now?
Is the fertile Willamette Valley due to flood deposits? Great explanations for the landscapes around us.
+dadatschool Yes, a big reason. Thanks.
Another great video, with each one the puzzle gets a little closer to completion, thank's Nick! Side note: I was exploring along the Eastern side of the Potholes Reservoir one summer and I took a close look at the sediment layers exposed by lake erosion, starting from the top I counted down and like clockwork when I reached the 30 year layer 2010-1980 I found a thick stripe of light grey of ash. (St Helens) As I went back through history I found more ash layers, thinking it would be cool to plot the dates of each one.
Thanks. Interesting. Yes, those sediments are very young and interesting.
When you launch that augmented reality app for our phones and tablets, please let us know here. Can't wait to see animations of the floods in an overlay on the present day image as seen through our ipads. No pressure or anything ;-)
Cool idea!
Me, too!! I have wished to see a film of computer graphics creation of the Bonneville flood as lifelong Idaho resident! I wonder how it sounded! I have asked a Native friend if she knows of any Native story about the Bonneville Flood but she has not gotten back to me on it.
Have you ever thought of outing together a geology tour of your area. It would be such a great experience? I would join
I am very interested in the subject matter presented in your video series. In particular, if you have not done so already, could you consider doing a segment on the creations of the Channel Scablands of central Washington. I am familiar with the story of how one geologist made history by defying conventional "wisdom", theorizing that these interesting formations were formed by flooding on a massive scale. I would love to watch and listen to your recitation of this story and your analysis of how this actually worked. I have watched a number of your videos and found them all fascinating and very well done. Makes me want to go back to school and study geology. Thanks very much.
Damn that Canadian ice invasion, someone should have built a wall!
Floodwater in the Willamette Valley moved much slower than the water flowing past Portland, and the water stayed in the Willamette Valley until the water passed Portland. This caused sediment to drop to the valley floor, making the valley higher. Cities in the Willamette Valley were buried rather than destroyed. Cities far older than 11 thousand years have been found all over the world, and there is no reason to assume that there are not buried ancient cities in the Willamette Valley. There is no reason to assume that people have not made tunnels down to ancient cities. Since there were many floods, there is no reason to assume that there are not cities stacked on top of each other.
Cool Beans
Fascinating!
Are the videos about the animal species that used to live in these glacial lakes?
I would like to hear your expert analysis of the Missoula Floods' influence upon forming the very fertile Willamette Valley.
Additionally - Due to geological considerations (partially) scuttling the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, I would like to hear your opinion as to a geologically ideal site for such a facility. Hanford is clearly less than ideal.
Great videos, I have always been fascinated in Earth Sciences and kinda see it as a detective crime scene investigation, in meticulously putting the pieces of events in time together to show the current picture of the landscape.
Doug K Thanks Doug. Yes, we are detectives. We need patience as the clues are gathered over the years. Not an instant gratification game!
***** Such is the nature of science. Building new hypotheses on current knowledge, self correcting and never ending.
very good video thank you my man
Thanks for watching.
who the fuck are you you are not hugefloods
Um.....did you watch the video?
yes i watch video i do geography for school and we watch it in school
lol, perfect. The internet: come for learning geography in school, stay for the savage comments. Your content is top notch. You are the NdGT of geology.
We need one of these guys for every geologic province in America 😆
Dry Falls has been a favourite place of mine since childhood. I used to stand there and imagine the Glacial Columbia roaring over them, bigger than any other falls in history, and the image was terrifying. And I also wanted to see it. Still waiting for that time machine...
Such an interesting topic! Why isnt this information mainstream?
Good question!
What! No red bow tie? The maps and scenery help me grasp the full story of the ice age forces that created such beautiful landscapes. The info on the Bonneville flood is fascinating as well. I assume the causes of hot spots are not fully known? Is the hot spot moving under the plate or is the plate moving over the hot spot? I thank you for such a well made and informative lectures.
Thanks for the comments, Mike. Hot spots still a hot topic in geology. Ha, ha. Causes of hot spots still being debated...and some now saying they're not a fixed as previously believed. That's why we were kinda vague in the video.
Did these floods create the Mima Mounds in Thurston County?
Nick, digging in the hot lava with your hammer may have removed the temper from the steel, making your hammer spike softer. (Took me a while to find this video.) BTW a very well done tour!
Why are the sedimentary layers of the Missoula floods so uniform in width?
Good question. In general, they get thinner as you go up....but still....there is still mystery about what the layers mean.