Grand Canyon National Park

Yellowstone was first National Park like place, before that concept was codified. It has a variety of great features and deserves its own cheerleader around here. Nominations are open...

 

Yellowstone's 3 volcanic super eruptions together launched about 1000 cubic miles of volcanic ash. This is a difficult volume to imagine, but Grand Canyon helps with that. Latter hole in the ground represents about 2500 cubic miles of material that has been sent downstream.

(edit) Mt Saint Helens ash emission, which people were around to see, was about 1/4 of a cubic mile.

 

In March/April eh? Bring warm clothes. Bring binoculars. Bring alarm clock and let early hours not pass you by.

 

Those who’ve gone to bottom of Grand Canyon, or floated through it, know something about the Colorado River. It is dammed upstream and has a daily flow cycle, based on (hydro) electricity demand. Here is latest year of flow:



Those blurs are daily cycles and also see seasonal variation in demand. Singular large spike is one of about 6 that have happened in recent decades, intended to make river channel better resemble pre-dam times when flow could be just about anything. Those would be interesting to observe in person.

There’s more of course. It is joined upstream by the Little Colorado River which has no dam. When its flow is high it creates a waterfall worthy of note:

Grand Falls – Leupp, Arizona - Atlas Obscura

Its year of flow looks like this:



So, about 5 times last year it resembled those atlasobscura photos.

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Where I’d wish to go with this is water flow through Grand Canyon during its few million years of rapid down cutting. How much water does it take to wreck 2500 cubic miles of rocks and export them? But there is no data. In early 20th century wet years before river dams, annual average flow reached 30 thousand cubic feet per second (compare 40 thousand cfs peak above) and peaks could easily have been 10 times higher then. Yet latter is mostly speculation. Technology to measure water flow came in as dam building did, so we know few details of how earth’s impressive canyons have been cut by water.

None more impressive than this one, and it’s all touristed and trailed up for your enjoyment. Do go take a look and stretch your thoughts.

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Best canyon in solar system, along with best mountain, are both on Mars. Along with worst access and tourist facilities. Yelp.