ABSTRACT The Pleistocene Okanogan lobe of Cordilleran ice in north-central Washington State dammed Columbia River to pond glacial Lake Columbia and divert the river south across one or another low spot along a 230-km-long drainage divide. When enormous Missoula floods from the east briefly engulfed the lake, water poured across a few such divide saddles. The grandest such spillway into the Channeled Scabland became upper Grand Coulee. By cutting headward to Columbia valley, upper Grand Coulee’s flood cataract opened a valve that then kept glacial Lake Columbia low and limited later floods into nearby Moses Coulee. Indeed few of the scores of last-glacial Missoula floods managed to reach it. Headward cutting of an inferred smaller cataract (Foster Coulee) had earlier lowered glacial Lake Columbia’s outlet. Such Scabland piracies explain a variety of field evidence assembled here: apparently successive outlets of glacial Lake Columbia, and certain megaflood features downcurrent to Wenatchee and Quincy basin. Ice-rafted erratics and the Pangborn bar of foreset gravel near Wenatchee record late Wisconsin flood(s) down Columbia valley as deep as 320 m. Fancher bar, 45 m higher than Pangborn bar, also has tall foreset beds—but its gravel is partly rotted and capped by thick calcrete, thus pre-Wisconsin age, perhaps greatly so. In western Quincy basin foreset beds of basaltic gravel dip east from Columbia valley into the basin—gravel also partly rotted and capped by thick calcrete, also pre-Wisconsin. Yet evidence of late Wisconsin eastward flow to Quincy basin is sparse. This sequence suggests that upper Grand Coulee had largely opened before down-Columbia megaflood(s) early in late Wisconsin time. A drift-obscured area of the Waterville Plateau near Badger Wells is the inconspicuous divide saddle between Columbia tributary Foster Creek drainage and Moses Coulee drainage. Before flood cataracts had opened upper Grand Coulee or Foster Coulee, and while Okanogan ice blocked the Columbia but not Foster Creek, glacial Lake Columbia (diverted Columbia River) drained over this saddle at about 654 m and down Moses Coulee. When glacial Lake Columbia stood at this high level so far west, Missoula floods swelling the lake could easily and deeply flood Moses Coulee. Once eastern Foster Coulee cataract had been cut through, and especially once upper Grand Coulee’s great cataract receded to Columbia valley, glacial Lake Columbia stood lower, and Moses Coulee became harder to flood. During the late Wisconsin (marine isotope stage [MIS] 2), only when Okanogan-lobe ice blocked the Columbia near Brewster to form a high lake could Missoula floodwater from glacial Lake Missoula rise enough to overflow into Moses Coulee—and then only in a few very largest Missoula floods. Moses Coulee’s main excavation must lie with pre-Wisconsin outburst floods (MIS 6 or much earlier)—before upper Grand Coulee’s cataract had receded to Columbia valley.

ABSTRACT In the central United States, the Laurentide ice sheet advanced considerably farther south and west during the Illinois Episode (marine isotope stage [MIS] 6) in Illinois than during the Wisconsin Episode (MIS 2). The Illinois Episode landscape, beyond the last glacial margin, is thus relatively undisturbed from its original form, with only a drape of last glacial loess on uplands, resulting in some of the best preserved geomorphic features of the MIS 6 Laurentide ice sheet. Recent field observations and high-resolution digital elevation maps have led to new ideas about how an ancestral Lake Michigan Lobe reached its southernmost Pleistocene extent (ca. 150–140 ka) and about the region’s deglacial history. Illinois Episode moraines are notably more narrow and discontinuous than last glacial moraines in northeastern Illinois. Subglacial lineations in Illinois, formed during the Illinois Episode, include a continuum from drumlins and megaflutes to megascale lineations. Crag-and-tail forms are most apparent in southeastern Illinois, influenced by buried Paleozoic bedrock obstacles. In north-central Illinois, megaflutes and drumlins occur in an area of thick glacial drift (>20 m). During deglaciation, an MIS 6 Lake Michigan Lobe likely separated into sublobes as the ice sheet thinned and basal ice conditions became warmer and wetter. Ice streaming into the Kaskaskia River Basin, southwestern Illinois, is envisioned during this period. Factors that likely contributed to faster glacial flow in the basin include the regional topography, a relatively soft and fine-grained substrate, and the subglacial hydrology.

The chronologic history of pluvial Owens Lake along the eastern Sierra Nevada in Owens Valley, California, has previously been reported for the interval of time from ca. 25 calibrated ka to the present. However, the age, distribution, and paleoclimatic context of higher-elevation shoreline features have not been formally documented. We describe the location and characteristics of wave-formed erosional and depositional features, as well as fluvial strath terraces that grade into an older shoreline of pluvial Owens Lake. These pluvial-lacustrine features are described between the Olancha area to the south and Poverty Hills area to the north, and they appear to be vertically deformed ∼20 ± 4 m across the active oblique-dextral Owens Valley fault zone. They occur at elevations from 1176 to 1182 m along the lower flanks of the Inyo Mountains and Coso Range east of the fault zone to as high as ∼1204 m west of the fault zone. This relict shoreline, referred to as the 1180 m shoreline, lies ∼20–40 m higher than the previously documented Last Glacial Maximum shoreline at ∼1160 m, which occupied the valley during marine isotope stage 2 (MIS 2). Crosscutting relations of wave-formed platforms, notches, and sandy beach deposits, as well as strath terraces on lava flows of the Big Pine volcanic field, bracket the age of the 1180 m shoreline to the time interval between ca. 340 ∼ 60 ka and ca. 130 ∼ 50 ka. This interval includes marine oxygen isotope stages 8–6 (MIS 8–6), corresponding to 260–240 ka and 185–130 ka, respectively. An additional age estimate for this shoreline is provided by a cosmogenic 36 Cl model age of ca. 160 ∼ 32 ka on reefal tufa at ∼1170 m elevation from the southeastern margin of the valley. This 36 Cl model age corroborates the constraining ages based on dated lava flows and refines the lake age to the MIS 6 interval. Documentation of this larger pluvial Owens Lake offers insight to the hydrologic balance along the east side of the southern Sierra Nevada and will assist with future regional paleoclimatic models within the western Basin and Range.