Recent flooding overshadowed by ‘Great Flood’
Until recently, the “Pineapple Connection” from Hawaii was directing Pacific storms to our region rather than into California, bringing plenty of moisture to the Inland Northwest in a weather pattern that often led to localized flooding. Several people have asked when the worst floods occurred in this part of the country. Well, that question easily can be answered by numerous area geologists, including Jim Pearl of Hayden, Idaho, and Tye Parzybok, of Missoula.
Parzybok writes in his engrossing book “Weather Extremes of the West”: “The greatest floods on earth in recent geologic times tore through Western Montana, Northern Idaho, Eastern Washington and the Columbia River Gorge about 13,000 years ago near the end of the last Great Ice Age. … Known as the ‘Great Spokane Flood,’ the Bretz Floods, or the Glacial Lake Missoula Floods, these floodwaters originated in a huge, deep lake that inundated much of Western Montana.” (I might add that Flathead Lake between Polson and Kalispell, Mont., remains today one of the biggest lakes in all of North America.)
Parzybok added: “Tongues of ice from a huge continental glacier dammed the lake until its water level rose enough to float the ice dam like a giant ice cube. Suddenly the ice dam broke loose, sending a towering wall of icy water across what is now Spokane (and Coeur d’Alene) and into the Columbia River Basin.
“For days on end, the area that is now Portland, Ore., lay submerged beneath 400 feet of water. And this happened not just once, but repeatedly.
“When the lake eventually drained, the glacial ice once again dammed the lake until the water level once more rose high enough to float the dam, resulting in more floods that deepened and widened the only significant ‘gap’ in the entire length of the Cascades, the spectacular River Gorge.”
We’ve seen several major floods in recent times in 1934, 1964, 1972, 1996 and other years, but nothing compares to “The Great Spokane Flood” of 11,000 B.C. That particular flood occurred near the end of the last Great Ice Age. Despite the fact that our planet has been warming, there are scientists and other researchers who feel that we soon may be heading toward a “new ice age.”
As far as our local weather is concerned, more cold conditions are expected into next week as modified arctic air skirts the region. Most of the frigid conditions will slide down the eastern slopes of the Rockies into Eastern Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming and points east.
We may see light to moderate snow showers at times into next week, but most of the heavier snows will fall well to the east of us, with the Great Lakes and New England really getting “pounded” by late-arriving Old Man Winter. Mid- to late February should be both milder and drier than usual locally under a stubborn ridge of high pressure.
This has been the pattern across the Inland Northwest for several years now as Pacific storms have pushed under the ridge into California and the desert Southwest.
There still will be some occasional wet snows and briefly colder temperatures during March and, possibly, into early April. But they will quickly melt in driveways and area roadways as well. The mid-April through mid-June 60-day period will once again be wetter and cooler than usual, but not as damp as during the past few years. The summer of 2007 will see lots of warm and sunny days, but it won’t be nearly as dry nor as hot as in 2006.