Missoula Floods

We are big fans of Terra Tempo: Ice Age Cataclysm! by David Shapiro, and asked the author to give a talk for our homeschool group on his book and its subject.  Mr. Shapiro is a naturalist who has written some marvelous books for kids on natural history.  His Terra Tempo series, which now includes the recently published Terra Tempo, Vol. 2: The Four Corners of Time, are graphic novels about three kids who find themselves travelling back in time, witnessing amazing moments in the history of our planet.  His talk was wonderful.  He began by describing the Missoula Floods.  They were a series of floods that were the most catastrophic floods on record.  They took place around 15,000 years ago, in a cycle that began with melting ice from glaciers forming the immense Lake Missoula in Montana.  The lake was held in place by a huge ice dam, which would eventually break, carrying a huge wall of water all the way to the sea.  Mr. Shapiro had maps to show the extent of the flood waters and many pictures to show the effects that can be seen today.  He also described the amazing variety of animals that lived in the Pacific Northwest at the time. Some have since become extinct ( like short faced bears and sabre toothed cats), some have relatives that survived on other continents (like horses and camels), and others have been relatively unchanged (like rabbits).  Then he told us all about the creation of the book, which was a collaboration between himself, illustrator Christopher Herndon and colorist Erica Melville.  He described some of the research and character development they did, and showed us how the book came together, from initial sketches to the finished work.  (Their new book is much longer and covers a wide segment of the earth's evolutionary history! Check it out!)

He asked us an intriguing question:  How many of us had heard of the Missoula Floods before reading his book?  I realized that the most I knew about them beforehand came from a mention on the website for the Camassia Natural Area, which explains that the landscape there was profoundly changed by catastrophic floods.  I then set out to find what other resources there are for learning about the Missoula Floods.  There were no accounts of the Missoula Floods handed down by Native Americans, and in fact there is currently no evidence that there were any humans here to witness them. The book Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods   by John Eliot Allen is not a book for kids, but I found it really readable and an excellent resource. Surprisingly, there are few books on the subject despite its obvious awesomeness and we could find no others for kids beyond  the Terra Tempo book.  But we did find a handful of films.  NOVA: Mystery of the Megaflood was the documentary that Jasper liked the best.  It explains the fascinating history of how geologists finally understood that these floods really did happen on an incredibly mind boggling scale, and explains the strange  geology of Washington's Channelled Scablands.  Have you ever noticed tiny ripples in the sand on the beach, formed by the waves?  Now imagine those ripples as 30 foot high hills!

Another great documentary was presented on Oregon Field Guide (episode 1001), with much more information about Portland area effects.  They also have a shorter piece about glacial erratics (episode 1303), rocks carried to the Portland area from as far away as Canada. Our most famous one was the Willamette Meteorite, now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is believed to have fallen to earth somewhere in Canada and was carried all the way to West Linn by the floods.  It's the largest meteorite in North America.  Another one which includes more recent findings is Sculpted by Floods:  The Northwest's Ice Age Legacy.

Watch Sculpted by Floods: The Northwest's Ice Age Legacy on PBS. See more from KSPS Documentaries.

Recently the City of Tualatin has been seeking to draw visitors to experience the legacy of the Ice Age, and is developing exhibits and an Ice Age Walk which will definitely include information about the floods. (If you've never been to the Tualatin Library, you really ought to go and check out the mastodon skeleton on display.)  Another great resource is the Ice Age Floods Institute, which has chapters in all four states connected by the floods.  The local chapter occasionally sponsors public talks and field trips that are definitely of interest.