Synopses & Reviews
When geologist J Harlan Bretz walked the dry scabland channels of eastern Washington in the 1920s, he realized he was viewing a landscape sculpted by water lots of water a flood of catastrophic proportions.
Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods tells the gripping tale of a huge Ice Age lake that, when it suddenly drained, unleashed more that ten times the combined flow of all the modern rivers of the world. This is also the story of geologists grappling with scientific controversy "of how personalities, pride, and prejudice sometimes supersede scientific evidence."
Generously illustrated with photographs and two-color maps, the book follows the path of the floodwaters as they raged from western Montana across the Idaho Panhandle, then scoured through eastern Washington and rushed down the Columbia Gorge to the Pacific Ocean.
Along the way, readers can examine glacial lake shorelines, giant current ripples, now-dry waterfalls that when flowing would have dwarfed Niagara Falls, and other evidence that led scientists to daring new conclusions about geologic processes.
Synopsis
Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods tells the gripping tale of a huge Ice Age lake that, when it suddenly drained, unleashed more that ten times the combined flow of all the modern rivers of the world. This is also the story of geologists grappling with scientific controversy -- "of how personalities, pride, and prejudice sometimes supersede scientific evidence". Illustrated with photographs and two-color maps, the book follows the path of the floodwaters as they raged from western Montana across the Idaho Panhandle, then scoured through eastern Washington and down the Columbia Gorge to the Pacific Ocean.