Mystery of the Megaflood

Through the study of rocks, scientists took on the controversial area 200 miles East of Seattle, known as the Channel Scablands. They noticed giant boulders (erratics) and enormous potholes that could not have been made by normal river processes. It seemed like the only thing that could have put the boulder there were ice glaciers, but that was ruled out too because being so remote, glaciers couldn't have reached the scablands. In 1923 Harlen Bretz hypothesized that the area was a result of some sort of great catastrophe that happened overnight. The hills had ripples in them, which looked like they could have been created by the sea. He came to the conclusion that they must have been created by a single giant flood. However, hypothesis didn't fare well because it sounded too Biblical. In order to convince his colleagues, he needed a source to explain where the water came from. The unusual marks on the bedrock in Montana was evidence of glaciers. They could have created Lake Missoula by damning the Clark Fork River. Joseph T. Pardee is the scientist who discovered the ripples years later and he wonder what caused the lake to empty. Iceland was 3000 miles away. The flood could have been a result of the melting of enormous mountains of ice. Due to super cooled water and hydrogen bonding, the water moved quickly through the ice, causing it to melt. Scientists created a mini Missoula in order to reenact this process and figure out how the flood could create extra features of scablands such as the potholes. This was found to be the result of bubbles that were formed when water was moving through the glaciers.