The Story Of A River

Last week I used the formation of oxbow lakes in a young river as an illustration of where to look for wormholes.

We might as well look at what the Buffalo River is all about because an oxbow lake, or the lack thereof, tells us a lot about how the river formed. Young rivers, which often form from the water of melting glaciers at the end of an ice age, tend to meander.

Surges of water may cause the river to overflow and find a "shortcut" across the bends. The bends are thus cut off from the river's flow and the entrance to the bend will silt up. The course of the river thus gradually straightens out and the former bend in the river may remain separated as an oxbow lake.

The Buffalo River formed in such a way after the end of the last ice age. It empties into Lake Erie. The question is why an oxbow lake formed upstream in the river, in West Seneca in the following image,

Image from Google Earth.

But not downstream in the bends closest to the lake, as seen in the following image,

Image from Google Earth.

The explanation is that Lake Erie, swelled by water from the melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age, was once larger than it is now. The enlarged version of Lake Erie is referred to as Lake Warren, and the enlarged version of Lake Ontario as Lake Iroquois.

As the waters from the melting glaciers gradually drained into the ocean the lake receded to the present shoreline of Lake Erie. The Buffalo River followed, and formed a meandering course as new rivers tend to do. But with the water levels receded there were no more surges of water enough to find the shortcuts across the bends. So, unlike further upstream, the bends in the Buffalo River near the shore of Lake Erie remain today.

For a look at what I have found in the natural history of the Niagara area here is a link:

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/06/niagara-natural-history-summary.html?m=0