A Little Report on Our January Storms

Intellicast radar image from 23Jan2017, approx 6:10 am, PST.

Our latest atmospheric river is passing through the area and will probably be gone by tomorrow (for more detail about the atmospheric rivers we've been subject to so far this January, see Garry Hayes' excellent live blogging of the storms here).

It was just three days ago, and this current ongoing storm or set of storms had just dumped an additional 8 inches in our area, which is at about 4560 ft (1890 m) in what is essentially the northern Sierra. The snow was wet and heavy, and had fallen on a base that included wet slush in places and thick snow drifts in others. I thought I'd better head out back to knock the weighty stuff off our fairly young fruit trees.

The gate to the back yard was frozen shut, so I went through our gazebo.

Small fir and pine trees weighed down by ice and snow.

A large cable spool.

As I tramped around in the back, shaking trunks and branches to knock snow off the thin limbs, I post-holed into the snow over the tops of my pack boots, to a depth of about 17 inches. Later measurements of this snow showed that the backyard was covered with about 24 inches.

After my backyard expedition was over, I wandered around taking a few pictures.

Snow on a rickety-looking ladder in our construction area.

A mini-avalanche on the roof from snow falling off a pine tree.

The road in front, not yet plowed, with tire and ski tracks.

Pine branches with snow.

Pine tree with needles plastered with ice and snow.

More plastering.

As I walked around, the temperatures were starting to rise, and large clumps of snow and ice started cascading off the trees. I became fascinated by this process and managed to get a number of action pictures.

The falling clumps drove me under some of our scaffolding structures.

Mostly protected from the falling snow, I felt a little more secure in getting photos without having myself and the camera caught by the falls.

Here I'm still under the scaffolding, looking up at a few large clumps of ice and snow that remain near the top of this pine tree, the same one that created the tiny avalanche above.

Finally, my patience in standing and waiting with camera poised was rewarded with a sizable fall.

One clump remains at the very tip-top of the tree, but it was time to go in to warm up hands and have a cup of coffee.

Where in the West: Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, and Fort Rock

Just a quick recap of this month's WITW challenge, which was won by Oregon geoblogger Lockwood. The three circular features in the photo shown above, taken on a northbound flight from Reno to Seattle, are Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, and Fort Rock. As noted by Lockwood, Big Hole and Hole-in-the-Ground are maars, and Fort Rock is a tuff ring.

You can read more about Hole-in-the-Ground here and here at Lockwood's Outside the Interzone, and about Fort Rock here and in several other posts (and see this compilation for all his 2013 Geo 365 posts, which cover many other locations in the area and elsewhere). Also, this USGS field trip guide is excellent for taking along on any road trips into the area.

View Bend OR to Winnemucca NV in a larger map

I've added the locations of the three features to an earlier map of mine. As you can see, they form a nearly straight line.

Where in the West: March 2014

I've got two photos for this Where in the West challenge: same location, slightly different viewing angle. If you enlarge these, you'll notice some distinctly volcanic features, three of which are nearly in a line and in Photo 2 start in the lower left corner and go toward the center of the photo.

Photo 1

Photo 2

I took these photos on a recent flight between Reno and Seattle; the general location should be fairly easy. I'd like the names of the three main volcanic features and what they are. There are, no doubt, other features that could be mentioned, some of which can't easily be seen in these airliner photos because of the washed out colors and distance. Also, for any of you really familiar with this area (and I know of at least one or two readers who are), the area in the lower center and right of Photo 1 and Photo 2, contain some features -- volcanic or otherwise -- which may or may not be of note.

A Where in the West Revisited: Rose Spit, B.C.

Flying back from Alaska on yet another recent trip, I was able to spot Rose Spit, which featured as a Where in the West challenge back in October of 2010. The shape of the northeastern tip of Graham Island — an island in the Haida Gwaii, or Queen Charlotte Islands, off of the coast of British Columbia up near Prince Rupert — always fascinates me.

The northern portion of Graham Island, with Rose Spit on the left below the wing, and Maset Sound in the upper right.

Maset Sound is a narrow, river-like entrance into the larger, saltwater body of water known as Maslet Inlet, which is somewhat visible beneath the clouds hovering over the central part of the island.

The waves around the spit were reflecting in a bright, yellowish glare from the mid-day sun.

A closer view of the convoluted shape of Rose Spit and its associated small islands.

A view of the spit, with a few of the small islands off its tip.

Related Posts:
Where in the West: October 2010
Where in the West: Rose Spit, B.C., Canada

Where in the West: Dean and Burke Channels; Thunder Mountain and Tzeetsaytsul Peak, B.C.

Dean Channel on the left, Burke Channel on the right.

The January 2013 Where in the West was won by Ron Schott, not only for finding the names of the two major fjords shown in this photo, but also for identifying the mountain near the head of Burke Channel, which has two major peaks: Thunder Mountain, the highest, and Tzeetsaytsul Peak, somewhat lower. Ron also came up with the name of northern branch of Burke Channel, known as North Bentinck Arm.

I didn't know the location of this challenge when I posted it, but having seen it from the air, I knew it was between Anchorage and Seattle, that it was south of a more-or-less north-south-trending strait, and that it was much closer to Seattle than Anchorage and probably south of SE Alaska. This general knowledge gave me an advantage over anyone else trying to discover the location. I homed in on the location and found most of the names of the fjords and mountains on Google Earth (in labeled photos), but wasn't sure if the names were correct, so checked them on Wikipedia and GeoBC.

Google Earth image almost identical to my first photo. Dean Channel is on the left; Burke Channel is on the right.

It's true that the snow and clouds in the photos I shot complicated finding the location!

A photo zoomed in on Burke Channel.

Google Earth image with Burke Channel centered,
similar to the previous photo. 

Labouchere Channel splits to the left (north), connecting Burke and Dean Channels; the North Bentinck Arm heads straight away from us; and South Bentinck Arm goes off southward, barely visible in this view.

Zoomed in photo with the mountain in question in the distance.

It was  a little harder to get the right angle on Google Earth to zoom in on and identify the mountain that stood out in my view from the airplane, and it was hard from the photo to tell which side of the Burke Channel and North Bentinck Arm the mountain really was on.

Google Earth view, with the North Bentinck Arm of Burke Channel on the left and the South Bentinck Arm heading southward to the right.

The mountain really stands out in the Google Earth view (above). It's really on the north (left) side of North Bentinck Arm, and it has three smaller mountains nearly centered in front of it (west of it).

Google Earth image: Thunder Mountain is the highest peak in the center; Tzeetsaytsul Peak is the next highest peak to the left (north).

And there we have it: several fjords carved by glaciers, now partly (mostly) inundated with water, and one mountain with two main peaks. Thunder Mountain is highest at 2664 m (8740 ft); Tzeetsaytsul Peak comes in at 2575 m (8448 ft). Apparently, both Thunder Mountain and Tzeetsaytsul Peak were named for the thundering sound created by the movement of Tzeetsaytsul glacier.

Google Earth view of Tzeetsaytsul Glacier on the east side of Tzeetsaytsul Peak and Thunder Mountain; north is to the right.

Read about the Bella Coola area (Bella Coola is at the head of North Bentinck Arm) at the Bella Coola Blog.

A few Geological References:
Gehrels, George E., and Nevine D. Boghossian, 2000, Reconnaissance geology and U-Pb geochronology of the west flank of the Coast Mountains between Bella Coola and Prince Rupert, coastal British Columbia: Geological Soc America, Special Papers, v. 343, p. 61-76. Abstract at Refdoc.fr.

Mahoney, J. B., et al, 2002, Structural geology of eastern Bella Coola map area, southwest British Columbia: Geological Survey of Canada, Current Research, 2002-A10, 9 p.

Smith, D. J., and Desloges, J. R., 2000, Little Ice Age history of Tzeetsaytsul Glacier, Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, British Columbia: Géographie physique et Quaternaire, v. 54, no. 2, p. 135-141.

Stowell, Harold Hilton, and William C. MacClelland, eds., 2000, Tectonics of the Coast Mountains, Southeastern Alaska and British Columbia: Geological Society of America, Special Papers v. 343, 389 p.

A few Geographical Links:
Dean Channel location - at GeoBC

Fitz Hugh Sound - Wikipedia

Fitz Hugh sound location - at GeoBC

Labouchere Channel location - at GeoBC

North Bentinck Arm location - at GeoBC

South Bentinck Arm location - at GeoBC

Thunder Mountain location - at GeoBC

Tzeetsaytsul Peak location - at GeoBC

Where in the West: January 2014

I won't mention exactly how long it's been since I posted a Where in the West (or the one and only Where in the North), because I don't have the means to look it up right now (I'm writing this without an internet connection). Suffice it to say that it's been quite a while.

The photos below are of snowy, mountainous country with fjords and -- for additional location-enhancing info -- with a particularly high mountain in the background. As I write this, I know only the general location: somewhere between Anchorage and Seattle.

Where in the West (WITW) always features a location in the western part of the northern hemisphere. Be the first to identify the location -- hopefully the fjords and a mountain or two have names -- and if you can find out a bit about the geology (hint: glacial?), all the better.

Two fjords.

Zooming in on the fjord on the right in the first photo, from a slightly different angle, with a fairly tall mountain near its head.

Zooming in on the high mountain, slightly off-center to the left, with the fjord now nearly out of the picture on the left.

This should be easy to find, and sorry, no prizes.

Where in the West: Half Dome from Olmsted Point

Yes, it's Half Dome, as Cole Kingsbury of Chaotically Flow-Banded so astutely (and quickly) noted. I figured this month's WITW would be easy, but thought perhaps Half Dome would be overlooked for a while longer, off there in the distance down the upper reaches of the Merced River drainage basin, beyond a hanging valley above Tenaya Canyon. Half Dome is a classic exfoliation dome, one that has been partly cut away along a regional joint system by the glaciations that formed Yosemite Valley. See this excellent picture of the exfoliation of Half Dome at EPOD.

It's a good thing that Ron Schott came up with the location from which the photo was taken — that location being Olmsted Point or, more likely, somewhere near the Olmsted Point pullout on Highway 120, the Tioga Pass Road. I'm sure I would have eventually found the point using Google Earth, but Google Street View just shows fog. Unhelpful.
I don't see a name for the particular side canyon or creek below Olmsted Point, but both the side canyon and main canyon are U-shaped drainages carved by glaciers. The topo map is from MSRMaps, courtesy of the USGS. It's a little messed up as far as the splicing goes, but the north-south dividing line between Sections 31 and 32 is about a mile.

View Olmsted Point in a larger map

Besides the glacial pavement, glacial polish, glacial striations, and glacial erratics (lower left of the WITW photo) already noted in the comments of WITW: March 2011, there is a nice criss-crossing of joint sets, sets that are roughly orthogonal. One joint set, as seen in my photo, is parallel or sub-parallel to the direction of glacier movement indicated by the striations. Larger, more regional fracture patterns can be seen in the Google Map view above. The regional fracture pattern at N30E is parallel to the hanging valley below Olmsted Point.

Too bad I didn't have my Brunton with me while on this summer, 2000, roadtrip. It mostly wasn't that kind of a trip, more of a family thing with roadtripping and geology added. The particular family involved (mine) has difficulty dissociating roadtripping from geology, and indeed, why should we?!

Roadside Geology of Yosemite Valley by Garry Hayes of Geotripper.
Roadside Geology of Yosemite Valley at Geotripper Images.

Where in the West: March 2011

The Where in the West series has become an erratic, semi-quarterly to semi-annual feature on this blog, with March being a favored month. The March, 2011, edition of WITW should be fairly easy, so I'm expecting the name of the obvious geologic and geographic feature, and would also like the approximate location from which I took the picture along with the identification of some geologic features. I can see or infer at least four; but then, I know where it is. :)

Photo was digitized from a 2000 print
© 2011 Looking for Detachment
All Rights Reserved

Twelve Months of LFD (2010)

As per usual (see 2008 and 2009), I'm doing the year-end meme showing the first sentence of the first post of every month, along with - for LFD - the first photo if there happened to be one. Seen everywhere, especially at VWXYNot?, Dreams and hopes of a (former post doc) scientist, There and (hopefully) back again, and Thus Spake Zuska. The rules for this meme are simple, as explained by DrugMonkey: Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

January
It being the start of a new year (the year 2010 to be precise), I have a few deep-time links for all you deep-time lovers (or would that be lovers of Deep Time?):

• The 2009 Geologic Time Scale: GSA
  
  ...


• Hutton's geology: ‘No vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end’: OpenLearn
  
  [no end of sentence in the long link list was detected upon review]

February
Here, in non-chronological order, are a few of the geoblogospheric posts that have caught my eye recently.

March
The March, 2010, version of Where in the West (WITW) is really just an excuse to post a glacier picture or two.

April
Just a quick preview of a roadcut on Highway 36 near Susanville, CA, showing a basalt flow over some white [probably tuffaceous] lake sediments. The reddish baked zone may might include subaerial deposits.

May
Callan Bentley at Mountain Beltway has had a couple posts up recently about mud cracks.

June
Three years ago today, while driving between somewhere and somewhere else, I came upon this cool oasis in the greasewood zone below the sagebrush steppe on the northeast side of Honey Lake, CA.

July
I took a road trip last week, south into Big Smoky Valley (MSRMaps), in order to grab a few photos from areas I visited in 1976 while on my thesis hunt.

August
I just returned from a mega-trip with MOH into central Oregon, where I met with family at an annual reunion-type affair on a basalt-capped bluff overlooking a small Oregon town.

September
I've been working on a Highway 50 roadside geology series for quite a long time, and have managed to get a few posts in every now and then, but have many more to go before I really consider it complete (could it ever be complete?).

October
Where in the West, if you might remember, features some [unknown] location in the western part of the northern hemisphere.

November
Ophir and Out ... well, to Middlegate, anyway.

December
And so, following on from the post "What is a Road Song," here is the essence of one of the three road tapes I made in the late 1980s.

Everyone who blogs is tagged for this meme.

Where in the West: Rose Spit, B.C., Canada

Rose Spit, with North Beach to the right and East Beach to the left.

The October Where in the West location was won by Ron Schott (no Schott rule was invoked) for finding Rose Spit, which forms the northeasternmost tip of Graham Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Canada, about 35 km NE of Massett. The area can be viewed anytime the weather is clear and anytime one happens to get on the wrong side of the plane from Anchorage to Seattle (the right or west side), which MOH and I did about a year and a half ago, while returning from the start of the Iditarod.

The linear, north-trending East Beach in the foreground, with North Beach's beach ridges beyond and to the west.

Howard won the geology portion of WITW by noting the beach, spit, beach ridges, salt marshes or brackish lagoons between the beach ridges. I can't swear to the nature of the water between the beach ridges, but brackish to salty seems likely. Howard raised the question of whether the beach ridges are actually cheniers, which are beach ridges deposited on tidal mud flats or "on an alluvial plain of silt, clay, or peat on prograding deltas or coastal plains." I haven't found any information about what the sand ridges at Rose Spit are deposited on, so will have to go with beach ridge for now.
Also seen at Rose Spit:

"dissipative beaches backed by prograding foredunes on North Beach; reflective cuspate cobble beaches with a sandy low tide terrace on NW Rose Spit; and multiple-barred beaches backed by migrating foredunes and parabolic dunes on East Beach."

Pictures of these features — and much, much more — can be seen here, on page 3 and 4 of the pdf.

And from Overview of Geologic Hazards to Offshore Petroleum Development – British Columbia Continental Shelf:

"Megaripples, sand waves and sand ridges are particularly important in the vicinity of Rose Spit and Rose Bar at the northeast corner of Dogfish Bank. These features are the result of storm-driven sand motion on the shelf under the influence of topographic steering of tidal and wind-driven currents. In this area amplitudes of the sand waves and sand ridges can exceed 6 m. "

"The eastern coastline of Graham Island is largely dominated by a thick sequence of unconsolidated glacial outwash deposits capped locally by Holocene dunes. These sediments are retreating rapidly, with the eroded sediments being swept northwards towards Rose Spit. While average erosion rates apear to be about 1 m per year, retreat is highly episodic; in 1992-1993, for example, 11 m of land was lost at Cape Fife and 1.5 m was lost in a 24-hour period at the same site in 1994. Numerous, ephemeral shore-attached bars are associated with the high rates of longshore drift along eastern Graham Island. "

View Rose Spit at Flash Earth.

Some References:
Bornhold, B., and Harper, J., 2002, Overview of Geologic Hazards to Offshore Petroleum Development - British Columbia Continental Shelf, in BC Offshore Hydrocarbon Development, Report of the Scientific Review Panel (January 2002), Appendix 11.

Otvos, E., 2005, Cheniers, in M. Schwartz (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Coastal Science: Springer, p. 233-235.

Walker, I.J., and Barrie, J.V., 2006, Geomorphology and sea-level rise on one of Canada’s most ‘sensitive’ coasts: Northeast Graham Island, British Columbia: Journal of Coastal Research, SI 39.