Thanks to the contact by geologist Bruce Bjornstad about some great aerial footage he assembled showing some of the magnificent terrain shaped by the great floods which scoured our area as recently as 15,000 years ago. Geologists like Bjornstad theorize that the Great Floods occurred when ice dams blocked portions of the northwest and formed huge lakes like glacial Lake Missoula. Make sure you check out Bjornstad’s web site on the Great Floods by clicking this link. When those dams broke loose, they unleashed cataclysmic waters which changed the landscape of eastern Washington forever. Bruce Bjornstad is one of the premier experts on this phenomenon and he’s written books about it. You can click here to see my review of Bjornstad’s book: On the Trail of the Ice-Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin. If you want to see the results of the Great Floods, you can click here for a story I did on a large non-native boulder which rafted here on a large chunk of ice and was deposited near Benton City. You can get some good basic information in this post here on Hiketricities.com.
Bruce Bjornstad has worked to video record and edit footage of several Great Flood features around the Columbia Basin. You can click on the videos below, enjoy:
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