Re: Is the Hills' flood possible?

David,

One can't have depression after depression going north to Turkey without at the same time
having sediments which should still be there for all to see. A depression is a place where
sediments would try to fill up. Carol Hill rightly notes that in this kind of flood one could
get 50 feet of sediment fill in one of those areas, yet, they aren't there to be found. That is
the problem. Fluviatile deposits are only found along the river channels in northern Iraq, so
it is highly unlikely that there were these depressions.

I would like to add to Phil, when he gets back that he should not ignore my (and David
Sieman's) physical objections to this theory. David's note shows that there is a big problem
with rolling (as I had noted in my original post). And David brings up another excellent
point, the velocity of the water. He is right. As I interpret the following passage, the mean
river velocity for rivers not in flood stage, is about 4 mph, but the Hill's have a whole
region in flood for a year. Surely the velocity would be higher than 4mph.

        "The mean velocity of rivers in flood varies from 4 to 10 feet
per second. the mean velocity attained in large rivers tends to be
slightly higher than that in small rivers. There are, of course, many
local situations where, owing to constrictions or rapids, velocity
attains greater values. The figures cited above include a large
majority of river channels in reaches that have no unusual features.
For rivers of moderate size (2 to 100 square miles of drainage area),
the flow at bankfull stage will ordinarily have a mean velocity on the
order of 4 feet per second. If one had to make a guess without any
measurement data, that figure would be a usable approximation.
        "the U.S. Geological Survey has analyzed individual velocity
measurements made by current meter at the point of maximum velocity in
river cross sections. The data were from routine measurements at 48
gaging stations on 27 large rivers throughout the country. A
frequency table of 2,950 maximum values was compiled. Analysis showed
the mean to be 4.84 feet per second, the medial 4.11, and the mode
2.76 feet per second. Data on the Mississippi river constituted 13
percent of the sample and had a median value of 8.0 feet per second.
        "Less than 1 percent of the total measurements exceeded 13 feet
per second. The highest velocity known to have been recorded with a
current meter by the U.S. Geological Survey was 22.4 feet per second
in a rockbound section of the Potomac River at Chain Bridge near
Washington, D.C., on May 14, 1932. Velocities of 30 feet per second
(20 miles per hour) have been reported but were not measured by
current meter. No greater values are known."
Luna B. Leopold, A View of the River, (London, England: Harvard
University Press, 1994), p. 33

On Thu Jun 8 6:22 , "David Opderbeck" sent:

>Would the ark necessarily always have travelled in the river channel against the current? 
Maybe there are areas of depression outside the river channel in which the ark could have
floated and been blown northwards.  For example, Lake Tharthar, 120km northwest of Baghdad, is
a man-made lake created by flooding a smaller salt lake.  It's deep, and big.  I stumbled
across this description of it on a military helicopter pilot's blog:
>
> 
>http://phlebotomus.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_phlebotomus_archive.html%c2 
>  The pilot  describes flying over Lake Thartaras follows:  "We were lucky to fly over
>Lake Tharthar, the largest body of water in Iraq. Tharthar was created by flooding a large
basin containing a much smaller salt lake with flood waters from the Tigris River. When we were
out over the lake, all we could see in every direction was water. I could have been flying over
the North Atlantic, the scene was the same." 
>
>
>Obviously, this isn't to say the present site of Lake Tharthar was the place the ark went, but
just to raise the possibility that there are areas of natural depression where the ark could've
drifted outside the river channel for a time.
Received on Thu Jun 8 06:48:50 2006