The Unbelievable Story of Earth’s Most Epic Flood

↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓

One day around 15,000 years ago, a wall of ice 2,000 feet tall and 30 miles wide suddenly broke wide open, and it unleashed the largest flood that we know of in the history of Earth. Come and hit the road with me as we search for the geologic fingerprints of the Missoula Ice Age Floods, and learn the story of one of the worst natural disasters that’s ever happened!

High fives to Nick Zentner for educating me on the geology of Eastern Washington. He makes incredible geology videos on YouTUbe:

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00:00 Introduction
00:54 A geologic mystery
01:53 A very large lake
03:32 A mountain made of ice
05:15 The dam breaks
06:25 Biggest. Waterfall. Ever.
07:57 How the damage was done
10:10 Witnesses to destruction
10:49 A brave new idea
12:00 Stay curious.

[besmart]

This ancient flood was so bad, it caused an emergent sea
Thanks for watching! See if you can post a better flood or geology dad joke below 🤓

[peanutbutterjellyfish]

I live in Yakima, Washington. I’ve done the geologic journey through Washington, Idaho and Montana. It’s still hard to believe. When you’re standing in front of dry falls, you get a scope of the magnitude and it’s mind boggling.

[rotarypower]

Anyone that is entranced by this topic, look up Nick Zentner, he covers this in broad scale to fine detail really allowing the viewer to rationalize and internalize the scale and immensity of each successive event, as well as many others that are directly connected to him covering this topic.

[diatribe]

Someone who did great videos on this and goes real in depth is Nick Zetner . He’s a professor with his own PBS videos. He also has a three hour lecture online of this subject alone .

[matthewjoseph]

The Zanclean flood (flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea 5 million years ago) had an estimated maximum discharge rate of 100 million cubic meters per second. The Missoula flood (The one in this video) had an estimated maximum discharge rate of 2.7 million cubic meters per second. The Missoula flood was definitely epic, but I don't know if it was the most epic flood in Earth's history.

[johnchedsey]

That portion of Washington genuinely has some of the weirdest geology anywhere and it's awesome. Like a lot of other folks, Nick Zenter's great videos informed me on how all this happened. I visited Palouse Falls and Dry Falls/Sun Lakes quite a few times to admire the crazy landscape. Highly recommend those places to people visiting Washington.

[douglasboyle]

The first time I read about the events surrounding Glacial Lake Missoula I was astounded, years later I took a trip out that way and saw all the witness marks for myself, the strandlines on the hillsides, the ripples on the prairie and the Channeled Scablands to really take in the scale and it is just awe-inspiring.

[inelegantartist]

My dad recently told me about these floods! We live in SW Washington and in my yard he's pretty sure we have a big huge rock in our garden that came from Idaho when the floods happened, bc of the type of rock it is are usually found over there. Neat stuff :)

[T-MANS-MAN]

Being from Eastern Washington, and having been to all the places in the video, it's really cool to see my local history on such a large channel.

[glacier]

One of the most phenomenal things about Bretz's observational skills, is that he formulated the original hypothesis without the benefit of aerial photographs, and had to conceptualize the scale of events from ground observations and maps.

[DadsRUs]

So many myths and legends about ancient floods its pretty fascinating. Athabascan indian tribes tell tales of ancient floods and can even point to the excact mountain their ancestors climbed to escape it.

[logandihel]

Thanks for covering the geology of eastern Washington so well! I've been to Palouse falls countless times to appreciate the beauty and utter chaos that occurred merely thousands of years ago to create our special landscape

[briangarrow]

As a resident of Washington state, I have visited the Channeled Scablands and the Potholes Areas of Central Washington multiple times. Dry Falls is truly impressive. I’ve also fly fished in the small lakes that are the remnants of that humongous river of ice age waters. If you ever travel through this area, it is definitely worth your time to stop and explore the natural beauty of these unique geological wonders.

[nerd_alert]

Nice! We learned about this in one of my Geology classes at uni. Most people in Central and Eastern WA learn about it, mainly because it's such a huge part of our history and Geology.

[graysweathercam]

I live at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains, which form the western edge of the city of Portland, Oregon. Thirty years ago I managed a project to construct a 625 foot, externally reinforced ferro-concrete radio tower (a unique structure), next door to what is now my house. As part of that project we excavated three, 40-foot square foundation holes 20 feet down to the fractured basalt that forms the bedrock of the Tualatin Mountains.

Once we had scraped away the top 5 feet of soil, the part that had been shaped by vegetation and man's activity, the remaining soil was flour-fine and contained no rocks - I mean zero rocks. When I asked our soils/geology consultant about this, he told me that this was all wind deposited silt from the Missoula Floods.

This soil is so dense, that the roots of the Douglas Fir trees that we planted as part of the landscaping and which are now over 35 feet tall, run along the surface of the ground, unable to penetrate the soil.

-Gray Haertig

[miqsh]

Don't you think people got more curious about geology these days? I'm a huge fan of Nick Zentner, he started streaming his geology classes during covid. Changed me forever! I will never look at the mountain same way ever again!

[keiderestevao]

These floods were absolutely epic, but the one that formed the Mediterranean sea was even more massive and spectacular. It is believed that at its peak it caused the level of the entire Mediterranean to rise by more than 10 meters a day

[tuxedojunction]

I grew up in the Channeled Scablands (near Connell), and have probably visited Dry Falls and Palouse Falls at least 5 times each on various family outings and school field trips. I still find it fascinating. It's nice to see our columnar basalts, rugged geography, and fascinating geologic history get some YouTube love!

[RandallSlick]

I've been semi-obsessed with this subject for 25 years and I've yet to see a better constructed, more succinct and accessible summary of it. Congratulations to all involved.

[tonylikesphysics]

Can we take a moment to thank Randall Carlson for his work?