Melting glacial waters backed up behind a natural dam, and when the lake got too large for the natural dam to hold, it broke loose and headed downhill in a massive and devastating flood. We even studied aerial photos of the very large ripple marks seen in the flat lands west of the scoured area.
I am mystified about this article which acts like this is a new idea. Apparently at some point in the last 30 years the incremental theory has come to be the accepted explanation, and now the catastrophic people are re-surfacing.
I was also taught about rapid onset of ice ages, because back in the 70's the consnsus of the climatologists was that we were heading into another ice age.
The Cooling World Newsweek, April 28, 1975
Excerpt:
...To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.” ...
(RUN FOR THE HILLS, THE ICE AGE IS COMING!)