This is what I live on:
400,000,000 years ago, there had been a considerable mountain range in Eastern Washington. Steptoe Butte was the tallest of that range. So there was some elevation that didn’t eventually get submerged in lava.
But 17,000,000 years ago, the Yellowstone Hot Spot was closer to us. And we had already had some action from the volcanoes of the sequence of subduction zones of the Pacific coast—volcanoes tend to form 80 miles inward of a coast where subduction is taking place, as wet rock gives up its water and it helps the formation of magma. A succession of islands had rammed the Washington coast, creating Washington in the process. The Steptoe area was probably an uplift not unrelated to that action.
But 17,000,000 years ago we had Yellowstone much closer to us, and our own flood basalt Columbia River Basalt Group, specifically the Grand Ronde basalts, laid down some 17,000,000 years ago. Probably this whole region at that time looked like a smoking parking lot, without the stripes, of course; and there was no Columbia river….just black rubble.
Then, 13,000 years ago, the ice age gave way to warming and melting of an ice dam on Lake Missoula, (Montana) sent flood after flood in our direction, giving us Dry Falls, the Columbia River, and the Channeled Scablands—before massive dustbowl conditions swept a lot of Nebraska toward us, creating Palouse hills to the south of us, burying Steptoe, once a very respectable mountain, up to its neck in loess.
We live on a ridge the Missoula floods missed. If you dig down too far in our lawn—you hit 17,000,000 year-old basalt, which exists in huge fractures. I can say we had one 4.5 earthquake here, and this place (we weren’t here at the time) acquired no cracks, but our apartment floor over on Latah Creek split right across, under the carpet and across the entry tiles. It moved as two pieces during the shaking. I was standing on one side and Jane on the other. This house is only one floor, brick and shiplap wood, pretty sturdily built, though our chimney might be at risk from another one.
Love the geology around here. Drive down the Columbia and you get a cross-section view of a huge basalt formation.
Off topic, but amazing. A music video by OK Go filmed in microgravity:
Upside Down & Inside Out
Which is why I liked having the “Roadside Geology of Montana” with me in the car. I’d like to find other books in the series, I’ve got Minnesota and Ohio (living in the most seismically active county in the state makes you quite interested in the geology).
I’ve discovered from the “Roadside Geology of Ohio” that my county sits on top of a large deposit of sediment from the previous Ice Age (which formed the Great Lakes of Michigan, Huron, and Erie), and that sediment is on a subfault of the New Madrid Fault, called the Fort Wayne (something or other, memory escapes me), sitting on ancient bedrock. If we have a decent sized earthquake, this sediment tends to act like gelatin in a bowl that’s been jostled. So, the initial shock wave is bad, but the jiggly gelatin-like movements of the sediment make it worse. The book doesn’t say it is subject to liquefaction like Los Angeles, but what it does is bad enough.
Roadside Geology: http://mountain-press.com/index.php
That’s a kind of liquefaction, I think. My brain is failing to produce the correct term*, but some soils, when they’re jolted, go squishy and then solidify again.
*Ah, the synapses fires: thixotropic soil.
I had thought they were out of print and unavailable, since the copies of Ohio, Minnesota, and Montana that I purchased were all used books.
Nice to see they’re still in print.
I want to get their SoCal volume. I see enough of the geology. (A couple of miles west of me is Santa Susana hills: piles of layered rocks, sloping down roughly north. The houses on them are very small compared to the rocks.)
SciAm published a whole issue on SoCal geology and plate tectonics, oh, 40 years ago or so. Later they republished several of those articles (and perhaps some news ones) as a separate volume. I used to have one, as I was raised in LA, but I gave it away. You may still be able to find it available for sale somewhere by searching online.
One of the articles was how the Pacific side of the southern San Andreas is broken into blocks, trying to shift their way around the deeply-rooted transverse range of the San Gabriels, et al.
Or do an Amazon search of “Roadside Geology of”.
I’ve seen several of that series; if you are not a professional geologist, it covers the rocks and minerals of an area reasonably well for amateur rockhounds. I have one for Hawaii; did you know we have several different lava compositions, depending on which magma chamber and which sub part fueled the lava flow? More than just aa and pahoehoe!
Near Mono Lake and Mammoth Lakes are a cluster of little bitty volcanoes, Mono–Inyo Craters. Some are small enough you can climb them in a few minutes. They have pumice and obsidian intermixed. Don’t expect your shoes to survive: you’re essentially walking on glass and sandpaper.
Driving down I5 just south of Roseburg, OR, sweeping around Mt Nebo near McLain Ave West, there is a large flat spot DOT blasted out for equipment. As I went by, out of the corner of my eye, I got the impression of circles. Next time through I looked at it–concave and convex casts of “pillow lava”. Pillow lava is produced by undersea eruptions as the water quickly “freezes” the outside of the tongue, as more keeps pushing in to fill it. It inflates, then cracks forming a new “pillow”. So Mt Nebo at Roseburg was an undersea volcano from one of those “island arcs” the North American Plate crashed into.
We have both pillow and pillar lava—aka columnar basalt. 😉 Not too much of the former—I think here, this far inland, it may be lake-formed. Lots of columns on the roadways—I always just wince when the highway rips through more of them: they’re so remarkable. But they also collect a few cars in bad weather, so they try to prevent them being in center median.
Interesting!
Walt and Joe make good points about the distance vs apparent magnitude, between Spokane and the CSZ. I tried to find good information on that but only found data. (Not the same by a long shot!)
But the point I was trying to illustrate was that people tend to look to first-order effects, while the second-order effects are broader and more likely to “get you”. For example, Oregon has no refineries. Its storage tanks are on fill next to the Willamette River in St Johns. Bye-Bye! When the CSZ goes so do all the Columbia River crossings. The Astoria Bridge closes the river at the mouth. All 7 bridges in Portland across the Willamette, one I5, one I405, and the I5 crossing of the Tualatin on the way south go down. Nothing much is coming in or going out. In a matter of days transportation will be reduced to “shanks-mare”. There are advantages to the European village life.
The islands have a track record with tsunamis, with bad ones in 1946 and 1960 that took out whole communities. That previously mentioned earthquake in 2006 blew our electrical generating station offline for a day, but that same power plant is on a tidal flat. It wouldn’t take much of a wave to knock it out for several days or longer. We have alternate generating stations (about 30 windmills, the old sugarcane processing plant, and an ever-increasing number of roofs with solar panels), but if our main plant went down for any length of time, we would be hurting.
How many people have visited Molokai and never thought to ask, “Where’s the crater?”
If you want to get technical, there is a teeny tiny vent, aka crater, on Kalaupapa, the little tongue of land that formed after most of the Molokai caldera fell off. Kalaupapa is also home to Hawaii’s only Hansen’s Disease colony. There are only seven remaining survivors of that sad episode in our history still living in the settlement. You can go for a tour of the colony down the sea cliffs that formed from the caldera crumbling, 3000′ high, on mule back!
My first thought when I heard about 3-11, the Tohoku Quake, was “Thank God it was the Japanese!” They know they’re going to get hammered. They’re not afraid to spend money protecting their critical infrastructure. (How long did it take Congress to pass a Highway Bill, and how much of what needs to be done is covered?) Their bridges, hospitals, etc. are built with “base isolation”–they give and slide, and stay in operation.
OPB’s Oregon Field Guide compared the preparedness and effects with Oregons. The inescapable conclusion is we deserve what’s going to happen.
I can tell you those beautiful coastal houses worry me. There’s not going to be very much warning at all for anything, and tsunami is more than possible.
oh yeah. I’m currently LIVING in a beautiful coastal house, and having seen one tsunami here (from the Japanese earthquake) I’m not worried about them directly, but a big one will do some serious damage to the roads here. With a large tsunami, 101 will be gone both north and south, leaving 199 as our only path to the rest of the world provided we can get to it. If we end up with an earthquake AND a tsunami, such as from the Cascadia subduction zone going, its going to isolate us for MONTHS because 199 will go as well. To be honest, this house (a temporary home, I’m just occupying it until it sells) will probably be seriously damaged because there is a LOT of sand in the hillside between here and the ocean. 150 feet above sea level has the potential to become 150 feet down quite quickly!
The whole cascadia subduction zone is rather scary for those of us perched on THIS side of the Coastal Range!
I’m not into doomsday prep, but I think it’s always a good idea to have a stockpile of beans and rice in the house, combined with some pots capable of cooking it and surviving a direct cooking fire. They’re cheap in bulk, they survive for decades if not a century in reasonable dry storage, and if you ever are in a Situation, you won’t go hungry.
When we had our 8 day power failure followed by a snowstorm, we weren’t desperate—we had a little bistro down the block that provided really great food, plus our regular restaurant. Heck, I even had a charcoal grill to use if I had wanted to cook out in the snow, but we didn’t need to. But—we knew we could. As disasters go, ours was pretty cushy. We hung sheets in the two doors to the living room and had a little propane stove and a car that could get us to areas that had power. Propane stores well. Now we have a generator for the fish tank pumps and some light, in case, but we’re not getting rid of that propane heater—you can’t use those things without a window or door cracked, mind—but the fuel cylinders store well and just don’t go bad.
We’re still seeing trees down that haven’t been cleared—massive pieces the size of a dining table lying one after the other where they’ve been sectioned apart, root balls taller than house eaves upturned, with in some cases the house plumbing lines likely disrupted. Saw one yesterday that had taken down the front porch of a house and is still there.
There’s a band of sandy soil that runs through on the north side of the river, and an old section of houses that are built on that streak. They’re the ones that lost trees left and right. Evergreens have root balls that spread out like a fan around the tree, but there’s no central massive taproot going straight down. The roots are also somewhat brittle. If they’re in ‘soft’ soil, or saturated ground, with a 40 foot top and thick foliage above, they can go right down in a downburst kind of wind, which is what we got. Hemlocks, which have widely spaced branches, fared comparatively well. Blue spruce, which tends to have much denser branches and foliage, took most damage. A medium sized one across the street went down. Ours stood, being sheltered I think by the house. Our three 40 foot hemlocks just let the wind through their branches, with their roots pretty securely anchored, and stayed upright, while one down the alley did go down, taking out the power lines, two fences, a car, and a garage roof, plus damage to a house roof, as best I can figure. Just curious, which trees proved vulnerable. But we’d had a lot of rain and snow, and the ground was indeed pretty soft.
That must be the difference between palms and deciduous trees. Palms also have that wide fan of shallow roots (generally within the top 3′ of the surface), but they are very fibrous, not brittle, and withstand storm-force winds better. They also don’t have that enormous wind catching sail of branches and needles, more, as Mark Twain observed, ‘a feather duster struck by lightning’ that will twist with the wind.
OTOH, hardwoods rarely go over wholesale, but will drop limbs. Oaks are notable for shedding dead branches wherever there is a weakness; one good winter gale, and you have enough downed stuff to feed your fireplace most of the season.
Another thought: how many of those trees that don’t handle storms well are native to the area? Palms are our natives, as hemlocks are yours, but were the spruce introduced? Last time we had a near miss from a hurricane (Flossie), introduced albizia trees were falling over left and right, causing the same havoc on the Big Island your spruces did. They are junk trees that grow fast and weak, but they look pretty — until a big blow, then crunch-thud!
Some spruces are native, just as some of the palms in Southern California are native or near-native (Washingtonias – they seed themselves freely.)
October ’14 we took the 4 island cruise, visiting a rhododendron nursery outside Hilo, Keaau. From there visited someone else beyond (Hawaiian Acres?). The tree damage around their place was impressive. Is that where they had the albizia trees?
Then took the “doors off” chopper flight around the vent that was/is threatening Pahoa. Also impressive–if you’re not afraid of heights. 😉 Only saw two failr small windows, but there were places we could feel the heat, even at (3,000′?) altitude.
“But were the spruces introduced?” — Chondrite, there is a real Dr. Seuss moment, maybe an entire poem or story, in that one little phrase. Hah, I love it!
Seuss? Is this a ruse? Silly goose! What are you trying to loose?
I’m also reminded of Who’s got the pain (when they do the mambo?) from Damn Yankees. (Not written by Lerner & Lowe or any of the usual culprits, but Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. Sadly, Ross died of bronchiectasis at age twenty-nine. Thank goodness for modern medicine, which is more modern than we sometimes realize!)
Dried spaghetti/pasta also stores nearly forever. Rice does take a long time to cook, i.e. expensive user of fuel. Pasta’s quick.
Once upon a time I heard of a pair of foods that in combination make a complete, i.e. not deficient in any crucial amino acids, meal–was it beans/lentils & barley? That’d be good to know and be able to prepare.
Beans-and_corn (maize) is a good combination for completeness.
Both rice and pasta are fuel-expensive because of having to heat the water. Rice doesn’t need to be drained.
Peas and barley are one of the complete amino acid combinations (along with people eating this it was also traditional where I grew up to grow mixed fields of barley and peas that were then ground together and stored as a high nutrition winter supplement for dairy cattle … they were given a couple of cupfuls twice a day sprinkled over their hay and corn like sugar over cereal)
outstanding article on LIGO http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them
In Newtonian physics, those two black holes would orbit their common barycenter forever. There’d be nothing to slow them into a “death spiral”. We don’t see that mentioned. That’s Einstein too.
People think black holes are ravening monsters that suck everything into their maw. Naw, gravity is just gravity. Think about it, we’re orbiting a black hole right now, and always have been! 😉
Yes!
But we are orbiting most of the radius of our galaxy distant from that massive black hole. Which is a very good thing. A very good thing!
Beans and rice, and probably corn added, are one of those near-complete foods.
I have a hole in hurricane / emergency preparedness I hope to fill this year, but it won’t be for another few months before I can do it — and no experience with it when I do. — If I have to go without power for too long, I’d need a grill or a camp stove, and I don’t have either. No experience with them, personally. Though with some videos or hands-on supervision, I’d probaly do OK.
My stove and oven are electric, so if the power goes after a hurricane, I’d need a grill or camp stove to cook on.
We were *very* fortunate after Ike that my grandmother had a gas stove, and fortunate I already had lots of experience with it.
Hmm, I’ll also need a few other things, but I try to keep a supply of several basics on hand in case. I’ll need to check that before hurricane season starts up this early summer.
However, I don’t want to be in town if anohter hurricane like Ike heads for us. No, sir, no, ma’am. If we get another like that, I’ll need to decide sooner than I did last time, and get my butt inland. No more one month-;lus of no electricity, thanks. — But I found out two or three days ahead of a cat 5 or so is the time to decide and get out of the area. — I wsa, however, smarter than the step-grandparent relatives who called, hours before landfall, and were going to drive us out. No. I already knew the highways were jammed, parking lot speeds, because a former minister friend, stuck on the highway, only miles out of town on the way to a city north of here, was expecting to be stuck on the highway overnight, as the hurricane made landfall and headed inland. — I (politely) told the step-grandparent relatives no thank you, we were going to have to shelter in place by then, not take our chances out on the highway, stuck in traffic. This was a good decision: My grandmother would have been in a bad way, if we’d tried that, too scared and in need to handle it. But if I’d had it to do over, I would’ve needed to make my decision and grab a flight out, if I could have, one or two days before I decided we no longer had the option to go. Whew!
(I’ve also been through Tropical Storm Allison and Hurricane Alicia here, and Rita. I’m native to the city, though. So I know what this is and not to take it for granted. It also means I do have some idea how to handle myself in emergency weather, which is better than some people have.)
All the talk of the geology and events is fascianted, by the way.
When I was a boy, up until just before college age, you could still go out either to the National Park or to the neighboring “McFalls’ Place,” (local small town landowners’ homestead) and see — Real, in situ dinosaur tracks, in the river and on the banks, exposed in and under rock shelves broken and flaked by river water erosion, and then discovered by paleontologists. The McFalls had this partly on their land, and first sold some of their land to the National Park for preservation and excavation and study, then later, as the senior McFalls mom and dad aged, their place itself was sold. On their land and within the park were these fantastic tracks in great condition, remarkable, especially to a kid who liked that. There were sections where a tyrannosaur or allosaur relative had crossed paths with something like a brontosaur or diplodocus, and their tracks had been buried in the prehistoric mud and turned to rock.
That was amazing. You could see overlaps, or where one had randomly gone and another had crossed its path or chased the other. These were in shelves in the landscape, where they had not yet been excavated, and there were portions where, over the years, scientists were pulling out the tracks and other evidence for study, before the river water could erode it further.
But the odd and controversial draw for the McFalls’ Place (and a small self-published book) was … “Man Tracks!” (Note the quote marks and exclamation point.) There was also evidence that was, yes, in situ, but probably inconclusive, that sure seemed like it could be, well, maaayybeee, giant hominid prints in the same strata, or else wearing sandals, maayybeee. Or…well, it was very, very odd. And yet there. And some was supposed to be also on the land sold by them to the Park Service. But what was shown to the public was on their land, with casts and photos. … And yes, I saw those, and yes, I hope I still have the book. — What do I think of that? I think they were smart enough to say they weren’t sure and it was inconclusive, but what they thought it was. (They thought it was evidence of prehistoric men or apes, maybe giant men, maybe Bigfoot, but something human-like enough, and possible wearing sandals. — But also, that these tracks, where they appeared to be co-existent with dinosaur tracks, were more unclear and muddy, deformed by soft, squishy mud which hardened. — Meaning, I think, that it could have been something else. — Were there then other, later “man tracks” of giant hominids or apes? Well, later, likely. But the very strange thing was, some of this really did appear to be in the same rock strata, occasionally overlapping, as though a human-like creature had stepped in the same mud as a dinosaur (predator or herbivore, both). … But that just seems so impossible, given what we believe in science. And yes, some was on the Parks land. — But I would think most likely, it was something else that happened to look humanoid, squished in soft prehistoric mud. Some other critter. Other tracks? Either much later in the geological record, I think. Or something else. The McFalls family, back then, had a minor tourist attraction going with this, and anybody who’d show up, they’d talkl to, show what they had, point out where else it was (and back up their claims by saying it was also on the Parks land, and being investigated (and therefore not all currently visible to the public) by scientists. Hmm. They had plaster casts made from source tracks. (That’s likely true. There were plenty of tracks, definite, real, dinosaur tracks and the other, whatever-they-were tracks, to make casts from without, ah, seeding the place with any made-up tracks and casts of tracks. They had photos and the book.
This was, also, a difficult spot for the Parks people and the museum there. (The museum had its own attractions, with artist murals and statues showing how dinosaurs looked, including outside near the building and parking lot. Heh. They could do a little showmanship too.)
But it put them in a tight spot as to how to deal with the claims and minor tourist attraction from the McFalls neighboring the Park. The Park people benefitted, in some degree, by not completely dismissing the McFalls’ claims. And apparently, it was a genuine puzzle as to what these very real tracks were…tracks of. As in, what creature would make tracks that really were overlapping, and appeared human-like or ape-like? But was it some trick of the mud? Or had there been some dinosaur or other creature that could make tracks that looked sort of like that, in squishy prehistoric mud. Or was it…what? Could there have been any sort of “anomaly?” and if so, what and why and what could possibly cause such a thing? (Bradbury’s well-known short story had been written decades before, but the McFalls likely had never heard of it when the site was originally found, which was, if memory serves, back in the 1930’s or so.)
So it was a puzzle. A real puzzle with no clear answer that made any sense much to modern scientists, and caused much consternation, because it didn’t, and because the McFalls and the Park, both with contiguous geological, paleontological sites, held their opinions and were helping generate public interest in, well, dinosaurs and prehistoric hominids. — Exactly what it really was has never been well explained, which has to give the paleontologists conniption fits.
And since you could see the evidence in the natural rock on-site, in the river… I don’t know what to make of what I saw myself, as a little kid, up through an older teen. But dang, it was sure something.
The old McFalls folks are long gone, and their children were closer to my parents’ age, and I think they sold their family land to the Park, or it passed to the park with their passing.
Give the McFalls this, whatever the truth was — They were careful to keep it low-key, to make it an attraction, a mystery, that benefitted them and the Park neighboring them. They also would show this and talk to anyone who came there. (And sell the book. Heh.) This gave their ideas, mostly along the lines of, what the heck, we found this on our land and sold to scientists, and we think it’s prehistoric men, or apes, and that sure is strange, and might be “Pre-Flood” humans or…something. They (mostly) presented it as an “I-don’t-know-what,” but with an element of “We-think-maybe-it’s-really-giants-or-men-or-apes-before-the-(Noah)-Flood.” (I’m using quotes, not of what they said, but the idea.)
I think they genuinely did not know what it was and believed it might be something other than what science said, and possibly, they believed it backed up their religious beliefs to say it was that. But for decades, they would be glad to see people, talk to them about it, and build up the “sense of wonder” about the mystery there, which gave hundreds or thousands of people a nudge towards real paleontological science, geology, archaeology, and a love of naturla history. I am sure lots of adults and kids visited their place and the Park site and museum, and went away wondering what that really was, asking those very basic science-y questions, what is that, why, what did it, how, when?
In that much, I think what they did helped fuel interest for hundreds or thousands of Park visitors over many decades. Heh, they were known for this. — The Park museum and site are still very definitely there, though I think most of the tracks in situ have een excavated away for study by now.
I present that as, I guess, one of the curiosities of showmanship and what-if’s. It wasn’t so much trying to be a sideshow or a hoax. It was more a case of, these people found something and didn’t know what to make of it, and believed something about it, whether that was really what was in the rock evidence or not. — But because they would talk to people, promote interest, and play up the mystery, and because they’d sold land to the Parks Service to let this be scientifically explored, and then later their homestead too — Because of that, generations of people had a sense of wonder about those basic science questions, and about dinosaurs, hominids, history, earth sciences, and so on. And questions about, was what we thought we knew in science perhaps not so right? Was there more to it? And if so, what?
That, I think, is not a bad legacy. — I do know that when I was, oh, around late high school or early college age, on one of the last visits I’ve had to the Park and museum there — There was a little kid and his parents (and plenty of other kids and parents) who was all excited about the dinosaur statues and tracks and the exhibits inside. Heheheheh. That made me see what my parents must have seen, bringing me there when I was little, first starting to love dinosaurs and wonder about things. And that kid I saw is, oh, probsbly in his mid-30’s by now. (Dang, time flies!)
Not bad for a small town homestead family and a National Park site, and the work of teams of scientists over many decades.
And just what was that, walking through the mud, alongside dinosaurs? — Hmm, I suspect not so human-like as it seems. — But those other tracks, maybe so. — Whatever all that was, it was enough to fuel interest for a lot of people who saw it, in the 70’s onward.
We’re gradually finding earlier and earlier evidence of Man’s diaspora from Africa. (It would not be news finding later evidence, I suppose.) One chapter in the story is the loss of Stone Age technology going to Asia. The right stones just aren’t available. So, they went into the bamboo age. Probably, though, a previous wood age, which various apes and birds are still in, preceded the stone age.
We see tool-using levels of intelligence in apes, crows, octopi, seals, raccoons(?)…. Would we see it in whales, cats, dogs, emus, and so forth if they had limbs which could manipulate better? It seems likely given the advantages. But, they have to wander around under evolutionary pressure until they accidentally get manipulative capability since until you can actually manipulate objects, you have no survival advantage, no reason to lock manipulation into your genome.
It’s taken a long time for us to find evidence of Man’s travel, technology changes, and evolution going into Asia, and anywhere beyond Africa. If a tool-using species of dinosaur evolved 60-70 million years ago, how long will it take to find the evidence? Even epic megalithic architecture would be deeply buried. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” I don’t think we want to jump to conclusions and say they did exist, but I think we should admit the possibility and try to test the hypothesis a little.
Many years ago now, the state took out all the interesting rock formations that separated the north and south lanes of I95. A lot of us thought it was a pity, but there had been some pretty horrendous accidents in winter involving crashing into the median. This section of 95 goes through the coldest most rural part of the state. I guess it was a good idea. Scenery kills is never a good attraction for a state dependent on tourism dollars!
BTW you are probably aware of it, but the bottom of the left had column is doing some wonky stuff. I know no boundaries!
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and Jane.