Buried by 2,500 Feet of Water; The Altai Megafloods

Approximately 15,000 years ago, a wall of water more than 750 meters or 2,500 feet in height raced across a section of southern Russia. As this flood quickly overflowed the natural boundaries of river channels, it began depositing house sized boulders on cliffs, and creating giant ripples in the landscape. In the span of only a few hours, the river valleys were deepened by more than 100 feet and hundreds of feet thick of sediment were emplaced along its edge in giant bars. This flood originated due to one of the largest glacial dam bursts in geologic history, which permanently changed the landscape over a wide swath of Russia.

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Sources/Citations:
[4] Carling, Paul & Burr, Devon & JOHNSEN, TIMOTHY & Brennand, Tracy. (2009). A review of open-channel megaflood depositional landforms on Earth and Mars. 10.1017/CBO9780511635632.003.

0:00 The Altai Megaflood
1:25 A Massive Lake
2:00 Reaches the Caspian Sea
3:11 Triggering the Floods

[GeologyHub]

The comments are rightfully comparing the Altai Floods to the Missoula Floods, as they were both highly destructive similar Ice Age era events! I do want to however note that there may be a point of contention in this video. Some people do not think the flood continued into the Aral Sea, although I interpret that it did.

[shanehebert]

Glacial giga-floods like this must have been a heck of a sight for any ancient humans unlucky enough to witness and lucky enough to survive.

[steventhompson]

Awesome! I first heard of these altai floods in a talk by vic baker, reminded me of the Missoula floods, fascinating stuff

[billmiller]

I remember Nick once mentioning the Altai floods but I wasn't aware of their massive scale and the fact that they created nearly the longest river of the world for a short while.

[laraleepn]

Congratulations on 300K subscribers. I was watching for that.

[dahemac]

Nick Zentner has some excellent detailed material on his channel about the Missoula floods. These flood stories are amazing. I did not know about the Altai megafloods. Thank you.

[Flugmorph]

congrats on 300k subs, highly deserved!

[jamesleatherwood]

wish you would do a 10 or 15 minute video sometimes. but this was a cool video. thanks for your hard work!

[MossyMozart]

Events like these may have been the inspiration for the "global flood" tales that young Earth creationists believe in.

[TheSpaceEnthusiast-vlwx]

Thanks as always! These megafloods, like the Altai megafloods and the Missoula megafloods, are very interesting. One wonders how they would have looked in the air or from space!
Glacial lakes such as the Western Siberian glacial lake are quite fascinating.

[briangarrow]

So cool to hear about similar natural phenomena like the Missoula Glacier Floods! We should ask Nick Zentner to make a YouTube documentary on this topic with you! A great idea for a massive glacial flood documentary!

[Corvidae]

The ice dam crack was probably started by Scrat trying to hide that acorn.

[WiseSnake]

I hope you can do a video on the glacial runoff in the Mississippi valley during the late Pleistocene. I read one paper (Roger T. Saucier) that details how the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet produced pulses of significant flooding, even catastrophic flooding, continuously carving out the Mississippi valley for ~5000 years without lull.

[martinhastingsis]

Well Done, another informative and visually pleasing Geologyhub. Thanks.

[maxpower]

So basically borscht flavored Missoula floods

[puppybasket]

Thanks for that lesson. You cover such fascinating subject matter and do it very well.

[Baldevi]

So cool! I love watching your videos, I learn so much every time, and never know what you're going to show us even when reporting on current events in Geology!

[barrydysert]

This is a great topic. Good job shoehorning it into under 5 minutes and still mentioning the Missoula Floods!

Kudos for mentioning there are other interpretation of the data. That is the hallmark of scientific integrity !:-)

[joeycad]

I have recently thought this, that the bosphorus was cut when the black sea flooded over into the Mediterranean, and not vice versa.

[kwgm]

Thanks Tim. We, as a culture, tend to get North American Continent tunnel vision and forget the last Ice Age occurred all around the hemisphere.