Death Valley

Because apparently I don't have enough to do, I have gone ahead and created Google Earth overlays of some of the various shore levels of Lake Manly. Here I've shown the smallest extent (2,000 years ago & ~10,000 years ago) and the largest extent (~186,000 years ago). These were 16 m and 246 m deep, respectively.

I'm happy to share these; send me a PM and I'll help you out.


Smallest extent, 2 ka


Largest extent, 186 ka


Largest & smallest

These are very cool, thanks. But I'm curious what defines "smallest extent". Clearly it is the main basin / salt flat areas as we know them today. But wouldn't the lake have slowly shrunk from your light blue size to smaller and smaller until it was basically gone?

The water history of the region is fascinating. Is my understanding that the valley was once the terminus of the Owens, Amargosa and Mojave correct?

Yes! It was an amazingly large watershed for the middle of the desert. Some have claimed that this system occasionally overflowed into the Colorado Basin, but no definitive evidence has ever surfaced.

Numerous visible beach lines on the slopes of the Argus Range on the west side of Trona.

Owens Lake is looking like its historical self this year due to heavy precipitation last winter and spring. I imagine the scenes below would be similar to that seen by anyone in the Sierra or Cerro Gordo early in the 20th century. The first screen capture from the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District website, from its Microwave C2 camera on the slope above the northwestern side of the lake:



This screen capture from the Cal Fire camera at Cerro Gordo this morning:



The "new" Owens Lake is getting large enough to be seen on visible satellite: