A flood of minor biblical proportions

A fine day today, spent out on the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon, looking at history. Dr. Waite Osterkamp, a geomorphologist with the US Geological Survey, has been studying the Snake River Plain, and specifically the impact and results of the Bonneville Flood, for nearly the past twenty years. He's writing a monograph on his findings that he hopes to publish next year. That's him in the photo, holding what he told us was mollusk shell that was about 2,000 years old. We'd just dug it from the river bank.

The Bonneville Flood occured about 15,000 years ago. It was a giant lake nearly 1000 feet deep in the area later to become northwest Utah. Gradual wearing away of a natural dam in southeast Idaho released a torrent of water up to 400 feet deep (15 million cubic feet per second) from Lake Bonneville that roared west along the Snake River, tearing away topsoil, hills and small mountains, and transporting huge boulders for miles.

In the Snake River are just over 100 islands that were created by the Bonneville Flood from piles of rocks and boulders deposited when the flow of water subsided. Over the next few thousand years, topsoil was deposited by wind and plants grew, stabilizing the islands. These islands now provide habitat for wildlife and since the flood most have never been under water. They remain, more or less, as time capsules of that event 15,000 years ago. The islands are part of the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge, one of the first National Refuges created by Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s.

It was 105 degrees today, as well. I drank lots of water.