I have a good one! It is very interesting - it is called Short Mountain and it is in middle Tennessee! It is a lone mountain, a little over 2000 feet tall, surrounded by flat land and small hills for nearly 50 miles in every direction! It is a pretty crazy thing to see in person, especially standing on top of the mountain - it feels like your on an island in the sky. I hope you take a look into it! :-)
My wife & I visit Cayambe, Ecuador every year, Lat: 0*0'0". There is a snow-capped mountain, Vulcan Cayambe looming over the city. It is the only place on earth where snow occurs directly on the equator.
An anomaly near me is the Driftless Zone. It exists mostly in Southwest Wisconsin but Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois also contain small sections. It is a region that was not touched by glaciation and as a result features a landscape of rolling hills that are very different to the planes that surround it. Although it is not as stark as the examples in the video, it definitely fits the definition of a geographic anomaly.
I had a short discussion with someone from central Washington the other day, and he was somewhat amused by the detail I can see in and around my area of southern New England, which he essentially saw as flat. While I was able to go on about different aspects of the area that are a direct result of the last glaciation. There is no place in the solar system that does not have an interesting story of its own (I am one of those people who treats geology the way historians do history, as a story of the land, perhaps because it is archaeology that got me interested in geology). Some places just make it easier to see.
I live in Illinois near Aurora and driven through it on our portion along with some in Iowa and Wisconsin going around the Mississippi. US 20, US 52, US 18, US 151 and back to US 20.
@@koharumi1 'drift' or 'glacial drift' is basically gravel that travels with glacial ice sheets. This 'driftless' zone is an area where in Wisconsin where ice sheets never existed, so the landscape there looks much different than everything that was glaciated multiple times around it
Met a man who used to mine in the coal country of Western Virginia...he spoke of sometimes hitting pockets of super hot salt water. Fascinating what's beneath us that we have no idea of.
@@999manman I remember hearing one about 2 men talking one second, and the next second, 1 man was just talking to a boulder that fell right where the other man used to be. He just walked away as if the conversation had ended naturally, back to his duties. There were also the tales of entire tree trunks falling through the ceilings of the shafts. Granted, coal is made from fossilized trees, right? It just always amazed me that there is an entire, ancient Earth, buried under the one we know now.
@@timothylux410 That's quite a tale! My guess is they always lived a few minutes from a tragic death and just came to accept it. Yeah, I too would love to know what exists underground even in my local area...but that would take a lot of spelunking and I don't accept the possibility of death very well, unlike the old timers we're saluting!🤗
The Pine Barrens is supposedly where Satan's son was born - the Jersey Devil. I lived on the outskirts of the Pine Barrens - every kid talked about seeing it
@@koantao8321 Lieberoser Wüste, located 95km south of Berlin is only 5km^2 big. But the smallest is in fact in north america. Carcross desert in Yukon is only 2.6 km^2 big.
A couple places to mention: Eastern Washington. The combination of the Columbia flood basalts and recent Missoula floods have created some fascinating landscapes, full of endless rolling plains of basalt, gorges with towering columns and evidence of rapid erosion, dry waterfalls, etc. Its a pretty wild place to go through, especially if you're used to the typical towering Cascades and endless green hills of the western part of the state. Driving across the cascades is crazy, since the landscape changes so rapidly as you cross. For something outside the US, New Caledonia. The whole island is basically one giant wacky anomaly. I don't even know where to start with this one. Made pretty much entirely of heavy metal rich ultramafic soils, surrounded by the worlds largest coral lagoon, and has a biology that feels like what would've happened if the Chicxulub meteor never hit. And its part of the sunken continent Zealandia to top it all off.
We also have Rattlesnake mountain in Eastern, WA, it is often claimed to be the tallest treeless mountain in the world and was one of the few areas in the Columbia basin not completely covered by the floods.
Nick Zentner! He's a geology professor at Central Washington. He has a youtube channel that is fairly popular in the northwest. If you want to know about this stuff. He's your guy. I suggest you start with his "downtown lecture" series and work from there. Absolutely amazing work he has done to explain how weird it all is. The kind of explanations that make you want to buy a rock hammer and go for a hike. I cannot recommend him enough if you are interested in the geology of Eastern Washington.
It's not extremely noticable, but I live in the Ozarks and we have the Boston Mountains, a seemingly random and small mountain range between the flat plains that separate the Rockies and Appalachians.
What I always found remarkable was the stark contrast between the two ranges on either side of the Arkansas River Valley. I grew up in Northwest AR, and often visited family living in Hot Springs. On the north of the valley, you have the Ozarks, with massive limestone faces, extremely rocky soil, and deciduous hardwood. South of the valley, there are the Ouachita mountains, which are nearly antithetical: sandy dirt, extensive pine forests, and a lot of shale extrustions. The fauna is quite different too; we'd run into tarantulas, mayflies, and chiggers at my grandparents' house down there, while back home we'd have way more ticks and moths (bugs are the ones you notice most lol). I think Arkansas is sort of a weird transition zone of physical geography from the Mississippi river delta to the east, Oklahoma Great Plains to the west, and Louisiana costal wetlands to the south.
As I understand it, the Ozarks is a plateau and the relief that we see is the result of erosion. The Ouachitas, on the other hand, are an actual mountain range, and the flora and fauna are indeed quite different than that found in the Boston "Mountains" south of Fayetteville, Crowley's Ridge in eastern Arkansas is another extremely interesting geologic feature.
@@ALightInTheForest The Boston Mountains are a dissected plateau, but the Ozarks also include in Missouri the St. Francois Mountains, which are an actual mountain range, now eroded. This area does look pretty different from the Boston Mountains.
I've lived near the Sutter Buttes much of my life. Its definitely a defining feature around here. When I was a kid when lived out in the country just a few miles from where they start to rise up. Our house was surrounded by flat farmland, but just up the road a few minutes were what seemed to me huge mountains. When we'd visited family out of the area I always knew we were almost home when I could see them.
I have family that lives near the Buttes, and they're quite interesting. Especially since they're in the middle of a flat valley between the Sierra Nevadas and the Coastal Range.
I grew up in the Buttes. We lived in the old school house on Pass Rd while my dad took care of the almond ranch. We moved to Sutter when I was 12 and I have never left. I love it here.
The Flint Hills of northeast Kansas deserve a mention. I've lived among them my whole life and as a former geology student, I can tell you a lot about their formation and history. They even contain a few volcanic outcroppings in the otherwise entirely sedimentary Great Plains. Very underrated but sublime landscape underlain by a fascinating geological story. Edit: There's also a few other unexpected places in Kansas. The Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands, the Quivira salt marshes, the Red Hills, the Smoky Hills, the Chalk Pyramids, Little Jerusalem, the Osage Cuestas, the Cross Timbers oak savannah (which also stretches down through Oklahoma to Texas) and the tiny sliver of the Ozarks in the extreme southeast corner of the state. Kansas has a much more varied landscape than it gets credit for, but regrettably, most of the prettiest sights here are on private land and inaccessible to the public.
5:50 So true! In 1996, my wife and I toured Las Vegas, Southwestern Utah, and both rims of the Grand Canyon. The strangest thing about the trip was the drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We started joking about so many pine trees and lakes, thinking we passed through a wormhole to Upper Peninsula Michigan.
When we were planning our first trip to the Grand Canyon, I was doing a bit of research and realized that the elevation was almost the same as where I lived in the midst of the towering Rockies of Colorado. Which is why you get such a dramatic and deep canyon. You are just sitting on the edge of a mountain looking down. LOL. I was looking forward to getting away from the endless winter of Colorado only to get snowed on in Arizona! At 9000 ft, the North Rim is 1000 ft higher than the South Rim as the whole canyon is a huge crack in the earth. Maybe it should be called the Great Fault Canyon. But, then again geologists who study these things still think it was mostly formed by erosion. Where the heck did all that material go then? But, I digress. Personally, my favorite canyon area is Canyonlands in the Moab, Utah area. There you can actually experience the dramatic beauty instead of being limited to a look but don't touch experience of the National Parks. Even Canyonlands N.P. is far superior place to visit than the Grand Canyon. For me the Grand Canyon never ceases to be underwhelming to me. I cannot explain it. But, I think it has something to do with the worship of the creation instead of the Creator. All that science is gonna prove that God could not possibly be involved in our existence.
When I was younger, my peepaw took me on a road trip from my home state of Kansas to NorCal and we passed through Colorado. We were surprised at how flat the eastern part of the state was, and we would think we were still in Kansas when driving through. As Harry from Dumb and Dumber remarked, “Huh, I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” And indeed, that John Denver is full of shit, because he shit all over the whole state and is the reason it’s a huge poohole.
The geographic "line" that runs through Scotland has always interested me and is a bit of an anomaly I guess. Loch Ness is one of the few lochs that form this line, due to plate tectonics I believe.
Yes that is the great glen fault, it actually continues on the other side of the Atlantic through the provinces of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which is fitting since that’s new Scotland, and then down into the states along the Appalachian mountains.
@@aidanbiton4105 no lol. If you look on Google maps there's a line of lochs that appear to cut Scotland in half diagonally, that goes from Inverness all the way across the country to Fort William.
Something not really the same but similar in a sense is a range you can see in the Appalachians Mountains. This separates the highlands from the lowlands in the east. You can see it if you turn on a terrain shaded map and look north-east of the TN/NC border.
Oklahoma has many surprising geographic features that most people aren’t aware of. The difference between the east and west is dramatic. Look at the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozarks in the east vs Little Sahara, Black Mesa, Gloss Mountain, and the Wichita Mountains in the West. Many people would also be surprised to see the variations in the landscape of Oregon and Washington as you move from east to west.
I agree with Oklahoma being a surprisingly interesting and diverse state. The southeastern corner is only about 50 miles or so from Louisiana, yet the panhandle touches Colorado and New Mexico!
Oklahoma also has some nice looking lakes. In the Neosho river next to Grove there's a place called Monkey Island. Looks like a fun place but I doubt it has any actual monkeys!
I grew up close to the Wichita Mountains and they are beautiful. The road winding around Mt, Scott to the parking lot on top is awesome. They Wichita's have a very interesting history.
I loved in Lawton for almost eight years. The firsr time I drove to Lawton, I was shocked to see small mountains pooping up in the horizon. Later I discovered the moutains in the eastern part of the state. Learned a lot living there.
-Arches in TN and KY -San Francisco Mountains/White Sands area in New Mexico -Table Rock in North Carolina (basically a mesa) -Garden of the Gods Illinois -Wichita mountains and Red Rock Canyon in Oklahoma -Delta region in Mississippi -Sand dunes in Canada, for some out of country stuff
I think it interesting that the highest point in the lower 48 states of the US are less than a hundred miles apart (Mount Whitney and Death Valley). Another interesting place is the Carcross Desert in the Yukon, Canada, considered the smallest desert in the world.
As an Avery who's descended from people from an island and loves spice, I can confirm that Avery Island is based But something to clarify: It's not a liquid that flows up to the surface, it simply does so because of how buoyant it is. A phenomenon called diapirism. If younger sediments are much denser, the salt goes up. Also, it wasn't a salt company that did the drilling in Lake Peigneur, it was Texaco.
You are Cuban. Cubans have nothing to do with Cajuns. You seem to be culturally misappropriating. Your idea of Avery has Nothing to do with Louisiana's Avery Island.
I live in Central AZ and have always loved the landscape here. You can probably talk at length about the Mogollon ridge and mountain ranges like the Black Hills, The Bradshaws, Mount Lemmon, and the San Fransisco Peaks.
Another anomaly: the Twin Arches in Tennessee. I didn’t know about them until i was literally brought there by my geology class just this Wednesday (we did a week-long camping trip to do field work in the mountains). You’d expect sandstone arches like that in the desert of Utah, but never in the eastern forests; nonetheless, *two* of them exist side by side. Another anomaly (kinda) is another site we visited that trip, but i had been to before: Stone Mountain in Georgia. It’s just a giant piece of granite, weathered out of the surrounding rock but never eroded or covered wholly by forest. Smaller monadnocks like it exist in the area, but they’re just so weird to see. One second it’s typical southern pine forest, the next is a bare desert of granite, gneiss, and other stones.
Craters of the Moon in Idaho has always stood out as a bit weird to me, with it being a more geologically recent volcanic development. As for worldwide - the Richat Structure, or Eye of the Sahara, is pretty fascinating.
Aahh yes, Poops of the Moon National Park 😉. I had always heard of it, and I drove through it last year or two years ago for the first time. Looks like a massive valley of poop.
As a New Jersey native, the pinies are great, great camping and honestly such a unique place. Never seen pictures of landscapes like I’ve seen in the pines. Wharton state forest, brendon t Byrne, or bass river st forests are all places to go if you want to see pines
One great out of place region in the US is the flint hills in Kansas. Usually when you think of Kansas you think of flat terrain, but not in the flint hills. They can get pretty high, and it’s also one of the largest remaining stretches of tallgrass prairies in the world. The draws between the hills are littered with creeks, creating tiny bluffs lightly surrounded by bright green trees. It is especially beautiful in the fall
Building off of that: one place in particular at the foot of the Flint Hills is my hometown of Fredonia. There are two very out-of-place mounds next to each other. I have never found much information on them besides one claim that they were pre-historic glaciers that came to rest along the coast of the mid-continent ocean mentioned in the video. However, I don't really have evidence to back up that claim. Furthermore, that region is at the tip of the North American cross-timbers. Not sure if they count as an anomaly (certainly anomalous for Kansas though).
We too, have our own geographical oddity. Our beautiful Mount Paektu, where my father was born under a double rainbow. That I love to climb on horseback Our volcano isn't on any plate boundary, it's within the middle of the southern portion of the Amurian Plate, so the fact a volcano formed there has left scientists puzzled.
You must hurry and escape, great leader. Mount Paektu is one of the planets super volcanos and has been exhibiting precursor signs of an eruption for quite some time now, such as earthquakes. Make haste, dear leader.
A video on the Cincinnati Arch would be interesting. The rocks in the Cincinnati area were uplifted and are older than surrounding rock formations. Also has some of the best preserved fossils in the world.
Here's a weird one - the French Broad River. It's one of the oldest rivers in the world but what makes it weird is that it does the seemingly impossible and actually crosses the Appalachian mountains.
If he brings that up he'd have to mention the New River as well. Probably the oldest river in the world and is older than the Atlantic Ocean* that it flows into. As a tributary of the Kanawha, then Ohio, then Mississippi, it finally flows into the Gulf of Mexico, which is apart of the Atlantic Ocean.
Yes! I remember my confusion upon seeing it basically on the"other side" of the mountains. I stopped and asked about it and the store owner had a chuckle.
about lake Pigneur, the oil company drilled into the salt mine resulting in the oil company to pay out a huge sum of money to the salt mine, environmental affairs and other individuals and companies...
Another fun fact about the Sutter Buttes: they have Unique Flora/Fauna that is adapted to live in a mountainous environment. Since it's basically a "island" of mountains surrounded by a "sea" of valley lands, then those animals evolved separately from all other mountain plants/ animals in the state. TL;DR : cool, unique animals and plants in the Sutter Buttes because they are surrounded by a valley.
Thank you for reacting to Avery Island. As a Louisiana girl, we've all grown up going there and learning the history of the salt Islands but most ppl outside of Louisiana don't know the history so it was cool to hear you talk about it.
8:58 On a clear day from my front yard I can see the Sutter Butte Mountains, the smallest mountain range in the world, to the south of me. Before there were dams built in this area to control the water, the entire North Sacramento Valley would flood. During these floods wildlife and various Native Americans would seek refuge on what are now called the Sutter Buttes. During these times warring tribes would call a cease fire while they took refuge there. Once Europeans were in this area the Sutter Buttes were covered with sheep ranches, till the military "took" their land and ownership of the mountain range. There have been rumors for many decades that there are missile silos built inside the mountains.
And amazingly unknown. Everyone seems to think Nebraska is all farmland like Iowa or Illinois when in reality the Sand Hills take up about half the state and is more like desert than farmland
When I drive down the Sierra Nevada foothills from Magalia west to Chico, I get a great view of the Sutter Buttes and the Coastal Range (which is currently snow-capped) across the Central Valley. After passing thru Paradise and its burned-out areas, I can coast down the ridge while passing our 'Little Grand Canyon' just north of Skyway Highway; there's a turnout where you can stop to view the unusually dramatic scenery of that canyon. The local geography is beautiful, but fraught with dangerous risks of forest fire and difficult, mountainous access for fire-fighters. That aerial view of the Central Valley at 8:50 is spectacular Where can I get a high resolution version of that shot?
Fascinating to drive down The Skyway in winter when the Valley is completely filled with a white blanket of fog and temperature drops from maybe 70s (F) in sunny skies to 40's and depressing gray mists.
I have a suggestion...in metro Atlanta on the east side of town, we have Stone Mountain, Panola Mountain and Arabia Mountain. They're really just huge exposed granite, but I think there is large granite formation underground on that side of town.
Stone Mountain is the top 10% or so of that massive granite formation. Also in Georgia there is Providence Canyon, which is nicknamed the "Little Grand Canyon." The soil is bright red-orange and looks like a smaller, heavily forested Bryce Canyon. Very much not what you would expect in rural southwest Georgia in the middle of a flat coastal plain.
The geography of Big Bend National Park is pretty crazy. I’d love to hear more about that. It is an incredible place to visit. I can’t recommend it enough!
The Sand Dunes of Saskatchewan in Canada are a pretty cool geographical anomaly that few even in Canada know about. Also the dry snow-less deserts of Antarctica could be another candidate.
A quick correction: salt domes don't form by salt melting from heat. It occurs because of two properties of halite (rock salt): it's more buoyant than most sedimentary rocks and it's relatively ductile. So when a layer of salt is differentially loaded by overlying sediment, it will begin to "flow" upwards. But it remains yet a solid as it does so. Halite's melting point is around 800 C, which is more than hot enough to begin altering other rocks, so if it was hot enough to melt salt, it'd be hot enough to make the other rocks flow as well.
A geographic anomaly near me is the Uwharrie Mountains in North Carolina. They are scattered in the central piedmont of North Carolina. These 'mountains' are the size of foothills. But there are a few spots in the area where you are driving on flat wooded terrain and all of a sudden, for a few minutes, it looks like you are somewhere in West Virginia. One spot is on highway 109 near Eldorado, NC and another spot is on highways 24 and 27 near the bridge going over Lake Tillery in North Carolina. Another oddity nearby is the Sauratown Mountains of which Pilot Mountain north of Winston-Salem is a part. They are called "the mountains away from the mountains."
If you come to Tucson, you can enjoy our beautiful Sonoran Desert but when we want to cool off you can drive 30 minutes up Mt Lemmon which has an alpine climate. When it snows up on the mountain there is a ski resort there so you can literally ski in the morning the come back down and swim in your pool (on warm winter days and if your pool is heated). I would love to see information about the glass mountains and also the Arbuckle mountains, both in Oklahoma.
I live in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. It's an area filled with relatively tall, rugged ridges and remote forest. The whole peninsula looks like it belongs in Alaska-not Michigan. The bedrock around here is often exposed, and is some of the oldest in the world.
I grew up on the Gulf Coast among the salt domes. The US military even detonated two nuclear bombs inside one in Mississippi, back in the ‘60s. Several others are still used for the US strategic oil reserves.
Arizona also has salt mines since the entire state used to be an ocean as mentioned by you My favorite thing to do is actually go fossil hunting since you can find shells which are badass
Great video! Check out Utah state route 12 from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef. Seems like there is a geographical anomaly around every curve. View of the waterpocket fold from top of the mountains in Dixie national forest - just wild
I live in southern Michigan and it's mostly flat but there's areas that we always called the 'glacial area' that for a mile or two are very hilly, and then it gets flat again. We've always thought that these are where the glaciers stopped and dumped all their debris. If farmed, these areas are very rocky and sometimes there's huge (6') granite boulders.
Eastern Washington. Dry Falls, the pot holes, coulees, Palouse Hills, petrified forest... There are too many things that come to mind to remember. Thanks, I enjoy watching things like this. ^_^
@@Nonamechannel420 High elevation helps keep the temperature in a livable zone for wild plants, but the monsoon brings the life. Utah and Nevada also have high elevations but are less exposed to the monsoon, so many of their high places are still deserts.
Kansas is flat as a pancake and you have nothing but infinite plains as far as the sight goes... until suddenly for some reason in the middle of the Gove County the Monument Rocks pop out of the blue, with no relation with the immediate surroundings whatsoever. They are like a super mini tiny canyon-like rock formations that I simply don´t understand where did they come from. It feels so out of place in the middle of Kansas.
The Sutter Buttes remind me of the Kaiserstuhl mountains in the Rhine rift valley. Both are reminants of volcanic activity sitting in a flat plain and are disconnected from other mountain ranges. Great idea and video, I'm looking forward to upcoming parts!
The Pine Barrens have an eerie beauty. There are ruins out there too. The best time to visit is coming up, when the tree frogs start singing in the evening.
Lake Peigneur disaster wasn't caused by a salt company accidentally drilling a hole into an existing salt mine. It was caused by Texaco's contractors when they were drilling an exploratory drilling hole to test for the presence of oil and gas under Lake Peigneur. Their contractors screwed up and drilled right into an abandoned section of the salt mine below.
I grew up one hour East of Yuba City, California and the Sutter Buttes. Locals were proud to show off the smallest mountain range on Earth. But in my town located within Butte County, we're proud of our "little Grand Canyon", aka Butte Creek canyon. It's literally a scaled down version of it's famous sibling.
I once visited a place in New Mexico which the person I was with just called "The Caldera". Its just this incredibly regular valley. Its so regular and the air is so clear that is you can't really tell how far away things in it are.
@@vladandlaika Love NM - some parts are just strange, peaceful, and beautiful. And I think you're right - that's what I remember. Thank you for naming it so I can find out more. Amazing that it's actually an active volcano. Hoping TII will do about video about it.
@@darkwing3713 I left a comment above about the Salt Flats near Willard and Estancia NM. They're rather hidden amongst the Plains Grasslands of that area.
6:30 I can't recommend enough the drive south on AZ Hwy 67 through the lush, green Kaibab National Forest to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Arriving at the Canyon to see the landscape open up to reveal millions of years of erosion, thousands of feet deep stretching for miles into the far distance will take your breath away - it's like seeing mountains in reverse, and don't be surprised if you find yourself struggling to make sense of what your eyes are seeing. You owe it to yourself to go to the North Rim at some point in your life. It's one of the most stunning natural landscapes you'll ever see.
This was very interesting, like all your videos. I had never heard of most of these geographic anomalies, so thanks for covering them. Can't wait for the New York video, that series on the states is my favorite 💯✌
I lived in Australia for a year (originally from the USA) and I found out about Gosse Bluff while hiking in the Northern Territory…it was created from a meteorite millions of years ago which is obvious from the air, but from the ground it looks like a small mountain range in the middle of nowhere…definitely worth a Google.
Very interesting video. I love learning about geographical oddities. One that I earned about from another youtube video (the "Itchy Boots" motorcycle travel channel) is the Tatacoa Desert in Colombia. It is a very small desert about 90 miles due east of Cali. It looks to be only about 100 square miles. If you pull up street view images the flora looks similar to the American southwest. But it is surrounded by lush tropics.
South America has quite a few geographical oddities. On Google Earth if you look at the towns of Iruya and Isla de Cañas, Argentina, one is in a nearly treeless high desert and other is in a lush rainforest. Yet as the crow flies the two towns are only about 35 miles apart.
There are what is called Carolina Bays which are found along the Eastern Seaboard from New York to Georgia. They are elliptical in shape and all seem to aligned with a single point to the Northwest. There are also what are called Rainwater Basins in Nebraska, of the same shape, but are aligned with a point to the Northeast. A theory that is evolving is that a meteor or comet hit the Saginaw Bay area of Michigan during the last ice age. According to the theory, large chunks of ice were blown in all directions, but only left craters where there was unconsolidated soil. This would be a wet sandy soil area in Nebraska and wet coastal areas on the East Coast. Of course, the ice chunks melted, leaving behind these relatively small craters. They gradually filled in with sediment and so are very shallow. They sometimes are hard to see, but show up better on LIDAR images.
Two possibly somewhat interesting features near me that may or may not be qualified for this, haha. #1. A tree: It's not so much a geographical oddity, but it's still very unique. On Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina, and a few other high peaks around here, there is a very specific kind of tree called the Fraser Fir. It can only be found natively on the highest peaks in the appalachian highlands, but you can find it often used as christmas trees! It's in danger due to the invasive balsam woolly adelgid, which threatens it. If you go to Mount Mitchell especially you can see the majority of them actually dying out, with fewer live trees than there appear to be. #2. Cades Cove in the Smokies: Cades cove is a valley in the smoky mountains national park that has eroded away from the mountains around it into a fairly large valley that is now a protected area itself after being somewhat recently abandoned with remaining buildings that still stand to this day. I think basically the weaker rocks got eroded away into this valley while the mountains stand. There are also caves, including the 'deepest in tennessee' but that's not an oddity! Extra mentions I just randomly know of. Yes, I'm interested in this type of thing. I'm about to begin a major in geosciences. This places are unique viewed on satellite or terrain maps on google maps, or obviously, visiting in person. Burkes Garden, Virginia The Outer Banks, North Carolina (Of course this one is unique!) Pawtuckaway State Park, New Hampshire. This one is also an old volcano ring. Outside the united states, an honorable mention is the Banks Peninsula Volano, in New Zealand. That looks pretty darn neat.
It was actually a oil company that drilled into lake peigneur, they accidentally breached the salt mine which had people working inside of it at the time
Craney flat is pretty interesting for a manmade one. Lake Drummond in the Dismal swamp being large but also very shallow across the entire lake. Natural Chimneys in Augusta, natural tunnel, mole hill volcano, and Mountain lake
Sequim, Washington gets about the same amount of precipitation as Los Angeles around 16 inches of rain per year, despite being only 60 miles away from the Hoh rainforest in Forks which gets around 100 inches of rain per year.
Everyone: Oklahoma is flat farmland Me, who lives in some low rolling mountains called the Arbuckles: ... sure. They aren't really an anomaly, just an ancient mountain range that has been slowly eroded into something more akin to big, steep hills. But they are also a prime place to find paleozoic fossils due to their age. I would love to see them talked about.
Though I grew up on Crowley's Ridge in Arkansas, I did not appreciate how geographically significant it was until I was an adult. It's located in northeastern Arkansas parallel to and about 35 miles from the Mississippi River. The great New Madrid earth quake of 1812 - 1813 occurred just north of Crowley's Ridge. I grew up in Forrest City, Arkansas on the western ascent of the ridge not far from the St Francis River and the White River both of which are indirect tributaries of the Mississippi. The ridge presents an amazing sight when approached from the east or west, because all the land for 100 miles on the west and 35 miles on the east forms the flood plain of the Mississippi River. On road trips back to Forrest City, the ridge even when many miles away serves as a heart warming confirmation that my childhood home is not far away. Though I left Arkansas on 1966, I still hold a strong attachment to Crowley's ridge. Some people may consider parts of it as mountains.
I suggest the Pinnacles National Park area in central California. This is an area of rock formations that has been physically moved many miles from its original source due to tectonic activity.
There's a section of some mountain range in Montana or Wyoming that didn't get thrusted upwards but instead, rode over the plate and bulldozed it way to the east for 30 miles before coming to a stop. Then there's a mountain valley in the Canadian Rockies that runs in a straight line for several hundreds of miles. Geologists also noticed that small islands had sailed across the Pacific Ocean to slam into the Western coastline since there's sections of mountain ranges that hold rock formations completely different than the rest of the range and each other.
I live near what some may call a geographic anomaly! It is called the Palmer divide, and it is basically a string of foothills near the front range. The weird part about it is that it is perpendicular to the front range, not seen with many other foothills. It is a very important part of the area in which is sits, as it causes weather patterns that allow the Black Forest to grow where there would normally be grasslands. It also contributes to a tornado hot-spot east of Denver.
Southeast OH is quite different than what most ppl perceive ohio to be like, basically diet Appalachia, theres also several very small old growth forests scattered in rural areas preserved by legacy land owners
The Little Sahara Desert in Beaver, Oklahoma, as well as the Sweetgrass mountains in Montana are two geographic anomalies that I’ve witnessed for myself
Take a look into the Roan Mountain range in East Tennessee! It’s saddled in between TN and NC near Virgina. It’s odd because unlike the majority of mountains in the area, the peaks of Roan Mountain are balds, so there’s 360 degree views. From my understanding, there’s not a clear reason why these peaks are tree-less, as it’s not an alpine zone, though I do believe there’s a Cherokee myth about it. Regardless, it’s a geographical oddity and insanely beautiful so perhaps it’s something to look at!
For geographic anomalies you might check out the Azores plateau, which coring and sampling have revealed has continental crust and subaerial limestone thousands of feet below sea level. Randall Carslson did a whole podcast about it being a basis for Atlantis, but it's interesting even if you don't buy into the Atltantis part.
Thanks for the awesome video! I could watch on this topic for hours. If you end up doing worldwide anomalies, one I find shocking is that Iran has a rain forest. Another is that Sweden’s seemingly continuous land mass contains over 200,000 islands
That Avery Is. picture looks like a textbook example of either a dead volcano with its hard core remaining after most of the rest has degraded or like a ring wall crater with central portion intact. I wonder what geologists have had to say about these things. This is another of your infrequent but extremely interesting videos.
There are parts of the Andes Mountains where one side is lush tropical rainforest and the other is arid desert, separated by only a few miles. One could drive between the two in an hour or two.
Correction. It was an oil company that caused the Lake Peigneur disaster. Contractors by Texaco miscalculated the drilling coordinates and accidentally penetrated the Diamond Crystal Salt company's mine. The salt company was not at fault.
I'm fascinated that only 1/3 of China is densely populated in the east. The western 2/3 is desert and rocky land due to the Himalayas pushing the land northeastward. There are pockets of green lands and valleys in this region, such as Xinjiang where they now grow cotton. This is also where the ancient Spice Road came around the northern edge of the impassable Himalayas.
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Loess Hills in Iowa, and the Paleozoic Plateau in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois.
How about the mountain in manhattan, NYC? At the base of the mountain was where the greatest land fraud deal took place.
I have a geographical anomaly Pennsylvania has only two naturally occurring Peat moss bogs in it.
I have a good one! It is very interesting - it is called Short Mountain and it is in middle Tennessee! It is a lone mountain, a little over 2000 feet tall, surrounded by flat land and small hills for nearly 50 miles in every direction! It is a pretty crazy thing to see in person, especially standing on top of the mountain - it feels like your on an island in the sky. I hope you take a look into it! :-)
My wife & I visit Cayambe, Ecuador every year, Lat: 0*0'0". There is a snow-capped mountain, Vulcan Cayambe looming over the city. It is the only place on earth where snow occurs directly on the equator.
An anomaly near me is the Driftless Zone. It exists mostly in Southwest Wisconsin but Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois also contain small sections. It is a region that was not touched by glaciation and as a result features a landscape of rolling hills that are very different to the planes that surround it. Although it is not as stark as the examples in the video, it definitely fits the definition of a geographic anomaly.
I had a short discussion with someone from central Washington the other day, and he was somewhat amused by the detail I can see in and around my area of southern New England, which he essentially saw as flat. While I was able to go on about different aspects of the area that are a direct result of the last glaciation.
There is no place in the solar system that does not have an interesting story of its own (I am one of those people who treats geology the way historians do history, as a story of the land, perhaps because it is archaeology that got me interested in geology). Some places just make it easier to see.
Driftless zone?
I live in Illinois near Aurora and driven through it on our portion along with some in Iowa and Wisconsin going around the Mississippi.
US 20, US 52, US 18, US 151 and back to US 20.
@@koharumi1 'drift' or 'glacial drift' is basically gravel that travels with glacial ice sheets. This 'driftless' zone is an area where in Wisconsin where ice sheets never existed, so the landscape there looks much different than everything that was glaciated multiple times around it
The most beautiful part of Wisconsin
Met a man who used to mine in the coal country of Western Virginia...he spoke of sometimes hitting pockets of super hot salt water. Fascinating what's beneath us that we have no idea of.
Grew up around there. Some hard men in the Appalachians 💪🏽
@@timothylux410 Tough as a pine knot!
@@999manman I remember hearing one about 2 men talking one second, and the next second, 1 man was just talking to a boulder that fell right where the other man used to be. He just walked away as if the conversation had ended naturally, back to his duties. There were also the tales of entire tree trunks falling through the ceilings of the shafts. Granted, coal is made from fossilized trees, right? It just always amazed me that there is an entire, ancient Earth, buried under the one we know now.
@@timothylux410 That's quite a tale! My guess is they always lived a few minutes from a tragic death and just came to accept it. Yeah, I too would love to know what exists underground even in my local area...but that would take a lot of spelunking and I don't accept the possibility of death very well, unlike the old timers we're saluting!🤗
The Desert of Maine - world's smallest desert, I believe.
Also, the lore of the Pine Barrens is pretty damn insane.
We have a desert in the Yukon that we like to call the world's smallest desert. Carcross I believe it's called. Not that it's a competition;)
I heard some Russian guy went missing in the Pine Barrens once, he was a former interior decorator.
The Pine Barrens is supposedly where Satan's son was born - the Jersey Devil. I lived on the outskirts of the Pine Barrens - every kid talked about seeing it
I believe the desert in former East Germany is the smallest on Earth.
@@koantao8321 Lieberoser Wüste, located 95km south of Berlin is only 5km^2 big. But the smallest is in fact in north america. Carcross desert in Yukon is only 2.6 km^2 big.
When the world needed him most, he returned
What I love most was my utter shock at how young this guy is. Rare qualities That make TII a one out of a million guy. Keep it up
Trump 2024
The Batman.
Said everyone ever
@@t0xyg3n trump for prison
A couple places to mention:
Eastern Washington. The combination of the Columbia flood basalts and recent Missoula floods have created some fascinating landscapes, full of endless rolling plains of basalt, gorges with towering columns and evidence of rapid erosion, dry waterfalls, etc. Its a pretty wild place to go through, especially if you're used to the typical towering Cascades and endless green hills of the western part of the state. Driving across the cascades is crazy, since the landscape changes so rapidly as you cross.
For something outside the US, New Caledonia. The whole island is basically one giant wacky anomaly. I don't even know where to start with this one. Made pretty much entirely of heavy metal rich ultramafic soils, surrounded by the worlds largest coral lagoon, and has a biology that feels like what would've happened if the Chicxulub meteor never hit. And its part of the sunken continent Zealandia to top it all off.
Never knew New Caledonia was so interesting...
Eastern Washington State: Yakima River Canyon !
Palouse humps !!
We also have Rattlesnake mountain in Eastern, WA, it is often claimed to be the tallest treeless mountain in the world and was one of the few areas in the Columbia basin not completely covered by the floods.
I love the geology of Eastern Washington, its absolutely incredible.
Nick Zentner! He's a geology professor at Central Washington. He has a youtube channel that is fairly popular in the northwest. If you want to know about this stuff. He's your guy. I suggest you start with his "downtown lecture" series and work from there. Absolutely amazing work he has done to explain how weird it all is. The kind of explanations that make you want to buy a rock hammer and go for a hike. I cannot recommend him enough if you are interested in the geology of Eastern Washington.
It's not extremely noticable, but I live in the Ozarks and we have the Boston Mountains, a seemingly random and small mountain range between the flat plains that separate the Rockies and Appalachians.
What I always found remarkable was the stark contrast between the two ranges on either side of the Arkansas River Valley. I grew up in Northwest AR, and often visited family living in Hot Springs. On the north of the valley, you have the Ozarks, with massive limestone faces, extremely rocky soil, and deciduous hardwood. South of the valley, there are the Ouachita mountains, which are nearly antithetical: sandy dirt, extensive pine forests, and a lot of shale extrustions. The fauna is quite different too; we'd run into tarantulas, mayflies, and chiggers at my grandparents' house down there, while back home we'd have way more ticks and moths (bugs are the ones you notice most lol).
I think Arkansas is sort of a weird transition zone of physical geography from the Mississippi river delta to the east, Oklahoma Great Plains to the west, and Louisiana costal wetlands to the south.
As I understand it, the Ozarks is a plateau and the relief that we see is the result of erosion. The Ouachitas, on the other hand, are an actual mountain range, and the flora and fauna are indeed quite different than that found in the Boston "Mountains" south of Fayetteville, Crowley's Ridge in eastern Arkansas is another extremely interesting geologic feature.
@@ALightInTheForest The Boston Mountains are a dissected plateau, but the Ozarks also include in Missouri the St. Francois Mountains, which are an actual mountain range, now eroded. This area does look pretty different from the Boston Mountains.
There is a section of southern Illinois called the Illinois Ozarks, with rugged terrain out of place in a mostly agricultural state.
@@ryanking7312 the Boston Mountains are an accretionary feature, shown by the ridges trending in an east-west orientation.
I've lived near the Sutter Buttes much of my life. Its definitely a defining feature around here. When I was a kid when lived out in the country just a few miles from where they start to rise up. Our house was surrounded by flat farmland, but just up the road a few minutes were what seemed to me huge mountains. When we'd visited family out of the area I always knew we were almost home when I could see them.
I have family that lives near the Buttes, and they're quite interesting. Especially since they're in the middle of a flat valley between the Sierra Nevadas and the Coastal Range.
The Native Americans say the Sutter Buttes were created when the top of Table Mountain exploded.
@@SCHMALLZZZ I'm looking at Table Mountain through my window right now.
Always loved the buttes there! Quite a landmark and geologically very interesting!
I grew up in the Buttes. We lived in the old school house on Pass Rd while my dad took care of the almond ranch. We moved to Sutter when I was 12 and I have never left. I love it here.
The Flint Hills of northeast Kansas deserve a mention. I've lived among them my whole life and as a former geology student, I can tell you a lot about their formation and history. They even contain a few volcanic outcroppings in the otherwise entirely sedimentary Great Plains. Very underrated but sublime landscape underlain by a fascinating geological story.
Edit: There's also a few other unexpected places in Kansas. The Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands, the Quivira salt marshes, the Red Hills, the Smoky Hills, the Chalk Pyramids, Little Jerusalem, the Osage Cuestas, the Cross Timbers oak savannah (which also stretches down through Oklahoma to Texas) and the tiny sliver of the Ozarks in the extreme southeast corner of the state. Kansas has a much more varied landscape than it gets credit for, but regrettably, most of the prettiest sights here are on private land and inaccessible to the public.
And in Nebraska, including Ashfall.
Love the Flint Hills!
Used to live there in Kansas, those rolling grasslands go as far as you can see!
I was totally surprised by the Flint Hills on my first drive through KS.
@@unnecessaryapostrophe4047 me too. I live in western NY state. Never been out west till driving through Kansas.
5:50
So true! In 1996, my wife and I toured Las Vegas, Southwestern Utah, and both rims of the Grand Canyon.
The strangest thing about the trip was the drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We started joking about so many pine trees and lakes, thinking we passed through a wormhole to Upper Peninsula Michigan.
When we were planning our first trip to the Grand Canyon, I was doing a bit of research and realized that the elevation was almost the same as where I lived in the midst of the towering Rockies of Colorado. Which is why you get such a dramatic and deep canyon. You are just sitting on the edge of a mountain looking down. LOL. I was looking forward to getting away from the endless winter of Colorado only to get snowed on in Arizona!
At 9000 ft, the North Rim is 1000 ft higher than the South Rim as the whole canyon is a huge crack in the earth. Maybe it should be called the Great Fault Canyon. But, then again geologists who study these things still think it was mostly formed by erosion. Where the heck did all that material go then? But, I digress.
Personally, my favorite canyon area is Canyonlands in the Moab, Utah area. There you can actually experience the dramatic beauty instead of being limited to a look but don't touch experience of the National Parks. Even Canyonlands N.P. is far superior place to visit than the Grand Canyon. For me the Grand Canyon never ceases to be underwhelming to me. I cannot explain it. But, I think it has something to do with the worship of the creation instead of the Creator. All that science is gonna prove that God could not possibly be involved in our existence.
When I was younger, my peepaw took me on a road trip from my home state of Kansas to NorCal and we passed through Colorado. We were surprised at how flat the eastern part of the state was, and we would think we were still in Kansas when driving through. As Harry from Dumb and Dumber remarked, “Huh, I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” And indeed, that John Denver is full of shit, because he shit all over the whole state and is the reason it’s a huge poohole.
The geographic "line" that runs through Scotland has always interested me and is a bit of an anomaly I guess. Loch Ness is one of the few lochs that form this line, due to plate tectonics I believe.
Yes that is the great glen fault, it actually continues on the other side of the Atlantic through the provinces of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which is fitting since that’s new Scotland, and then down into the states along the Appalachian mountains.
hadarians wall? the romans built that
@@aidanbiton4105 no lol. If you look on Google maps there's a line of lochs that appear to cut Scotland in half diagonally, that goes from Inverness all the way across the country to Fort William.
Something not really the same but similar in a sense is a range you can see in the Appalachians Mountains. This separates the highlands from the lowlands in the east. You can see it if you turn on a terrain shaded map and look north-east of the TN/NC border.
Oklahoma has many surprising geographic features that most people aren’t aware of. The difference between the east and west is dramatic. Look at the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozarks in the east vs Little Sahara, Black Mesa, Gloss Mountain, and the Wichita Mountains in the West.
Many people would also be surprised to see the variations in the landscape of Oregon and Washington as you move from east to west.
I agree with Oklahoma being a surprisingly interesting and diverse state. The southeastern corner is only about 50 miles or so from Louisiana, yet the panhandle touches Colorado and New Mexico!
Oklahoma also has some nice looking lakes. In the Neosho river next to Grove there's a place called Monkey Island. Looks like a fun place but I doubt it has any actual monkeys!
I grew up close to the Wichita Mountains and they are beautiful. The road winding around Mt, Scott to the parking lot on top is awesome. They Wichita's have a very interesting history.
I loved in Lawton for almost eight years. The firsr time I drove to Lawton, I was shocked to see small mountains pooping up in the horizon. Later I discovered the moutains in the eastern part of the state. Learned a lot living there.
I drove through Oklahoma on i40 and was impressed at how beautiful the state is. I expected it to be flat!!
-Arches in TN and KY
-San Francisco Mountains/White Sands area in New Mexico
-Table Rock in North Carolina (basically a mesa)
-Garden of the Gods Illinois
-Wichita mountains and Red Rock Canyon in Oklahoma
-Delta region in Mississippi
-Sand dunes in Canada, for some out of country stuff
Wichita Mtns wildlife refuge is one of my favorite places. Beautiful area.
Garden of the Gods Colorado
Ah, the Lake Athabasca sand dunes!
I grew up near The Delta. It extends into parts of Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri. You can definitely tell it was an inland sea at one point.
@@5roundsrapid263 born and raised here, can confirm it's very flat
I think it interesting that the highest point in the lower 48 states of the US are less than a hundred miles apart (Mount Whitney and Death Valley).
Another interesting place is the Carcross Desert in the Yukon, Canada, considered the smallest desert in the world.
Except the Carcross Desert is only considered the smallest desert in the world by people who are wrong.
I don’t think it’s technically considered a desert, I think it’s just a bunch of sand. Although its nice to think it’s a desert
@@steakfilly5199 yeah, there are sand formations like that lots of places
@@brycemcdermaid7995 why must you partake in the asshole behavior
Carcross is literally not a desert
As an Avery who's descended from people from an island and loves spice, I can confirm that Avery Island is based
But something to clarify: It's not a liquid that flows up to the surface, it simply does so because of how buoyant it is. A phenomenon called diapirism. If younger sediments are much denser, the salt goes up. Also, it wasn't a salt company that did the drilling in Lake Peigneur, it was Texaco.
Its avery the cuban american
Bro you're literally everywhere haven't I seen you on world war 2 week by week
And Texaco got out of legal trouble somehow.
You are Cuban. Cubans have nothing to do with Cajuns. You seem to be culturally misappropriating. Your idea of Avery has Nothing to do with Louisiana's Avery Island.
Many don't realize that about one-third of Oregon is desert, and in the middle of that desert is a place called the Lost Forest.
Closer to 2/3 than 1/3.
I've been looking and looking for that Forest. I lost it a few years ago with my car keys and haven't been able to find it.
4:20 7,000,000 hours worked without a significant injury is absolutely insane.
I live in Central AZ and have always loved the landscape here. You can probably talk at length about the Mogollon ridge and mountain ranges like the Black Hills, The Bradshaws, Mount Lemmon, and the San Fransisco Peaks.
Another anomaly: the Twin Arches in Tennessee. I didn’t know about them until i was literally brought there by my geology class just this Wednesday (we did a week-long camping trip to do field work in the mountains). You’d expect sandstone arches like that in the desert of Utah, but never in the eastern forests; nonetheless, *two* of them exist side by side.
Another anomaly (kinda) is another site we visited that trip, but i had been to before: Stone Mountain in Georgia. It’s just a giant piece of granite, weathered out of the surrounding rock but never eroded or covered wholly by forest. Smaller monadnocks like it exist in the area, but they’re just so weird to see. One second it’s typical southern pine forest, the next is a bare desert of granite, gneiss, and other stones.
The southern Appalachians are definitely a strange place
There are also natural arches in Kentucky and Georgia.
Craters of the Moon in Idaho has always stood out as a bit weird to me, with it being a more geologically recent volcanic development. As for worldwide - the Richat Structure, or Eye of the Sahara, is pretty fascinating.
One of my favorites!
Aahh yes, Poops of the Moon National Park 😉. I had always heard of it, and I drove through it last year or two years ago for the first time. Looks like a massive valley of poop.
As a New Jersey native, the pinies are great, great camping and honestly such a unique place. Never seen pictures of landscapes like I’ve seen in the pines. Wharton state forest, brendon t Byrne, or bass river st forests are all places to go if you want to see pines
Areas of Sussex County are beautiful.
One great out of place region in the US is the flint hills in Kansas. Usually when you think of Kansas you think of flat terrain, but not in the flint hills. They can get pretty high, and it’s also one of the largest remaining stretches of tallgrass prairies in the world. The draws between the hills are littered with creeks, creating tiny bluffs lightly surrounded by bright green trees. It is especially beautiful in the fall
Building off of that: one place in particular at the foot of the Flint Hills is my hometown of Fredonia. There are two very out-of-place mounds next to each other. I have never found much information on them besides one claim that they were pre-historic glaciers that came to rest along the coast of the mid-continent ocean mentioned in the video. However, I don't really have evidence to back up that claim.
Furthermore, that region is at the tip of the North American cross-timbers. Not sure if they count as an anomaly (certainly anomalous for Kansas though).
PLEASE do more of these! I thoroughly enjoy stuff like this
We too, have our own geographical oddity. Our beautiful Mount Paektu, where my father was born under a double rainbow. That I love to climb on horseback
Our volcano isn't on any plate boundary, it's within the middle of the southern portion of the Amurian Plate, so the fact a volcano formed there has left scientists puzzled.
You must hurry and escape, great leader. Mount Paektu is one of the planets super volcanos and has been exhibiting precursor signs of an eruption for quite some time now, such as earthquakes. Make haste, dear leader.
The Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy are quite spectacular and have a very interesting geologic origin.
The Adak National Forest, in Alaska. 6 trees total, none of them reaching 5' high (at least not when I was last there).
A video on the Cincinnati Arch would be interesting. The rocks in the Cincinnati area were uplifted and are older than surrounding rock formations. Also has some of the best preserved fossils in the world.
Here's a weird one - the French Broad River. It's one of the oldest rivers in the world but what makes it weird is that it does the seemingly impossible and actually crosses the Appalachian mountains.
If he brings that up he'd have to mention the New River as well. Probably the oldest river in the world and is older than the Atlantic Ocean* that it flows into.
As a tributary of the Kanawha, then Ohio, then Mississippi, it finally flows into the Gulf of Mexico, which is apart of the Atlantic Ocean.
@@maneatingcheeze Hi. the New River actually ends up in the Mississippi River.
Yes! I remember my confusion upon seeing it basically on the"other side" of the mountains. I stopped and asked about it and the store owner had a chuckle.
about lake Pigneur, the oil company drilled into the salt mine resulting in the oil company to pay out a huge sum of money to the salt mine, environmental affairs and other individuals and companies...
Another fun fact about the Sutter Buttes: they have Unique Flora/Fauna that is adapted to live in a mountainous environment. Since it's basically a "island" of mountains surrounded by a "sea" of valley lands, then those animals evolved separately from all other mountain plants/ animals in the state. TL;DR : cool, unique animals and plants in the Sutter Buttes because they are surrounded by a valley.
Thank you for reacting to Avery Island. As a Louisiana girl, we've all grown up going there and learning the history of the salt Islands but most ppl outside of Louisiana don't know the history so it was cool to hear you talk about it.
Yes
8:58 On a clear day from my front yard I can see the Sutter Butte Mountains, the smallest mountain range in the world, to the south of me. Before there were dams built in this area to control the water, the entire North Sacramento Valley would flood. During these floods wildlife and various Native Americans would seek refuge on what are now called the Sutter Buttes. During these times warring tribes would call a cease fire while they took refuge there. Once Europeans were in this area the Sutter Buttes were covered with sheep ranches, till the military "took" their land and ownership of the mountain range. There have been rumors for many decades that there are missile silos built inside the mountains.
Do u think they are there because i hear the rumor all the time
The Nebraska Sandhills country is utterly mesmerizing in every season.
And amazingly unknown. Everyone seems to think Nebraska is all farmland like Iowa or Illinois when in reality the Sand Hills take up about half the state and is more like desert than farmland
@@brucedewitt4994 Mari Sandoz fan?
Man, so glad to see Sedona featured. I visited the city last year amidst the pandemic, and it is absolutely jaw dropping.
When I drive down the Sierra Nevada foothills from Magalia west to Chico, I get a great view of the Sutter Buttes and the Coastal Range (which is currently snow-capped) across the Central Valley. After passing thru Paradise and its burned-out areas, I can coast down the ridge while passing our 'Little Grand Canyon' just north of Skyway Highway; there's a turnout where you can stop to view the unusually dramatic scenery of that canyon. The local geography is beautiful, but fraught with dangerous risks of forest fire and difficult, mountainous access for fire-fighters.
That aerial view of the Central Valley at 8:50 is spectacular Where can I get a high resolution version of that shot?
Fascinating to drive down The Skyway in winter when the Valley is completely filled with a white blanket of fog and temperature drops from maybe 70s (F) in sunny skies to 40's and depressing gray mists.
I have a suggestion...in metro Atlanta on the east side of town, we have Stone Mountain, Panola Mountain and Arabia Mountain. They're really just huge exposed granite, but I think there is large granite formation underground on that side of town.
Stone Mountain is the top 10% or so of that massive granite formation. Also in Georgia there is Providence Canyon, which is nicknamed the "Little Grand Canyon." The soil is bright red-orange and looks like a smaller, heavily forested Bryce Canyon. Very much not what you would expect in rural southwest Georgia in the middle of a flat coastal plain.
@@wwsciffsww3748 unfortunately providence canyon is unnatural… a cautionary tale of poor understanding and stewardship.
wasn't prepared for this video to trigger my petroleum class ptsd
The geography of Big Bend National Park is pretty crazy. I’d love to hear more about that. It is an incredible place to visit. I can’t recommend it enough!
Geologists describe Big Bend as God's trash heap where he dumped whatever that was leftover after creating Earth.
4:45 lake peigneur disaster - correction, it was a oil company that drilled into the salt mine. Not a salt company.
The Sand Dunes of Saskatchewan in Canada are a pretty cool geographical anomaly that few even in Canada know about. Also the dry snow-less deserts of Antarctica could be another candidate.
I’m curious if anyone knows what that rocky area is near the end of the video, the drone footage around the 11:30 mark? Beautiful!
I was thinking that looked like certain areas of the Sierra Nevada but that is a bit of a guess
I was going to ask them same thing. Hopefully somebody can answer.
That would be part of the Black Hills in South Dakota. Look up “Needles Highway Scenic Overlook”
@@Hayden2002WX Thank you! 🙏 Should’ve known it was in the Black Hills. Gorgeous territory.
@@OrdoCorvus I want to visit the black hills some day
A quick correction: salt domes don't form by salt melting from heat. It occurs because of two properties of halite (rock salt): it's more buoyant than most sedimentary rocks and it's relatively ductile. So when a layer of salt is differentially loaded by overlying sediment, it will begin to "flow" upwards. But it remains yet a solid as it does so. Halite's melting point is around 800 C, which is more than hot enough to begin altering other rocks, so if it was hot enough to melt salt, it'd be hot enough to make the other rocks flow as well.
This is correct
A geographic anomaly near me is the Uwharrie Mountains in North Carolina. They are scattered in the central piedmont of North Carolina. These 'mountains' are the size of foothills. But there are a few spots in the area where you are driving on flat wooded terrain and all of a sudden, for a few minutes, it looks like you are somewhere in West Virginia. One spot is on highway 109 near Eldorado, NC and another spot is on highways 24 and 27 near the bridge going over Lake Tillery in North Carolina.
Another oddity nearby is the Sauratown Mountains of which Pilot Mountain north of Winston-Salem is a part. They are called "the mountains away from the mountains."
What is the strange spiky mountain range starting at 11:20?
It’s the black hills
If you come to Tucson, you can enjoy our beautiful Sonoran Desert but when we want to cool off you can drive 30 minutes up Mt Lemmon which has an alpine climate. When it snows up on the mountain there is a ski resort there so you can literally ski in the morning the come back down and swim in your pool (on warm winter days and if your pool is heated). I would love to see information about the glass mountains and also the Arbuckle mountains, both in Oklahoma.
I live in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. It's an area filled with relatively tall, rugged ridges and remote forest. The whole peninsula looks like it belongs in Alaska-not Michigan. The bedrock around here is often exposed, and is some of the oldest in the world.
I grew up on the Gulf Coast among the salt domes. The US military even detonated two nuclear bombs inside one in Mississippi, back in the ‘60s. Several others are still used for the US strategic oil reserves.
Where are the mountains are 11:31?
Arizona also has salt mines since the entire state used to be an ocean as mentioned by you
My favorite thing to do is actually go fossil hunting since you can find shells which are badass
Look into the Carolina Bays. Dr. Tom Ross, a professor I had in college, was recognized as an expert on the unique land formations.
Agreed...after having seen over 10 of them, they are otherworldly to me.
And quite biodiverse.
Great video! Check out Utah state route 12 from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef. Seems like there is a geographical anomaly around every curve. View of the waterpocket fold from top of the mountains in Dixie national forest - just wild
Ya that highway cut through the reef - what a wild drive
I live in southern Michigan and it's mostly flat but there's areas that we always called the 'glacial area' that for a mile or two are very hilly, and then it gets flat again. We've always thought that these are where the glaciers stopped and dumped all their debris. If farmed, these areas are very rocky and sometimes there's huge (6') granite boulders.
Eastern Washington. Dry Falls, the pot holes, coulees, Palouse Hills, petrified forest... There are too many things that come to mind to remember. Thanks, I enjoy watching things like this. ^_^
1 - The Eye of Quebec
2 - The Eye of the Sahara
3 - The Oklo Nuclear Reactor
A presentation on how Arizona's forests get their moisture via the North American monsoon would fit TII pretty well.
I though it was high elevation
@@Nonamechannel420 High elevation helps keep the temperature in a livable zone for wild plants, but the monsoon brings the life. Utah and Nevada also have high elevations but are less exposed to the monsoon, so many of their high places are still deserts.
@@Hiiiiii74 it’s a mix of both cuz there are some very dry deserts in Colorado at 9k feet
Kansas is flat as a pancake and you have nothing but infinite plains as far as the sight goes... until suddenly for some reason in the middle of the Gove County the Monument Rocks pop out of the blue, with no relation with the immediate surroundings whatsoever. They are like a super mini tiny canyon-like rock formations that I simply don´t understand where did they come from. It feels so out of place in the middle of Kansas.
“As far as the eye can see “ NOT “as far as the sight goes”
@@coimbralaw
Uuuh, thank you.
Thank God for that guy with no friends!
The Athabasca dunes in Saskatchewan are a good anomaly, it’s a random sand desert surrounded by boreal forest.
i'd like an episode of why finland litterally has no mountains when it is next to norway which practically is ONLY mountain
Actually, Finland could be seen as an eroded mountainchain.
Having driven all over all 50 states and Canada, and Mexico, ive seen most all of these great places!
Arkansas maybe the most overlooked geographically diverse state in the USA. That could be an interesting video.
It’s Arkansas. Trees and hillbillies. Not much intelligence either.
The Sutter Buttes remind me of the Kaiserstuhl mountains in the Rhine rift valley. Both are reminants of volcanic activity sitting in a flat plain and are disconnected from other mountain ranges. Great idea and video, I'm looking forward to upcoming parts!
I really want to visit the Pine barrens. The Shortleaft pine is one of my favorite trees and I want to see a habitat like that
The Pine Barrens have an eerie beauty. There are ruins out there too. The best time to visit is coming up, when the tree frogs start singing in the evening.
Pilot mountain, North Carolina
Lake Peigneur disaster wasn't caused by a salt company accidentally drilling a hole into an existing salt mine. It was caused by Texaco's contractors when they were drilling an exploratory drilling hole to test for the presence of oil and gas under Lake Peigneur. Their contractors screwed up and drilled right into an abandoned section of the salt mine below.
I’ve been to Humphreys Peak in the mountains of Arizona really nice place
I grew up one hour East of Yuba City, California and the Sutter Buttes. Locals were proud to show off the smallest mountain range on Earth. But in my town located within Butte County, we're proud of our "little Grand Canyon", aka Butte Creek canyon. It's literally a scaled down version of it's famous sibling.
I once visited a place in New Mexico which the person I was with just called "The Caldera". Its just this incredibly regular valley. Its so regular and the air is so clear that is you can't really tell how far away things in it are.
If you are writing about the Valles Caldera, it is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen.
@@vladandlaika Love NM - some parts are just strange, peaceful, and beautiful. And I think you're right - that's what I remember. Thank you for naming it so I can find out more. Amazing that it's actually an active volcano. Hoping TII will do about video about it.
@@darkwing3713 I left a comment above about the Salt Flats near Willard and Estancia NM. They're rather hidden amongst the Plains Grasslands of that area.
6:30 I can't recommend enough the drive south on AZ Hwy 67 through the lush, green Kaibab National Forest to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Arriving at the Canyon to see the landscape open up to reveal millions of years of erosion, thousands of feet deep stretching for miles into the far distance will take your breath away - it's like seeing mountains in reverse, and don't be surprised if you find yourself struggling to make sense of what your eyes are seeing. You owe it to yourself to go to the North Rim at some point in your life. It's one of the most stunning natural landscapes you'll ever see.
This was very interesting, like all your videos. I had never heard of most of these geographic anomalies, so thanks for covering them. Can't wait for the New York video, that series on the states is my favorite 💯✌
coronado heights here in kansas, in the smoky river valley is a very random “mountain”, way higher than the surrounding flat land
Please do New Caledonia. One of the comments mentioned that it is a geological oddity.
Another would be the continent of Zealandia.
Arbuckle mountains in Oklahoma would be cool! Also the Flint Hills.
I lived in Australia for a year (originally from the USA) and I found out about Gosse Bluff while hiking in the Northern Territory…it was created from a meteorite millions of years ago which is obvious from the air, but from the ground it looks like a small mountain range in the middle of nowhere…definitely worth a Google.
Crater of the moon in Idaho is wild. You go from high desert to what feels like another world.
Very interesting video. I love learning about geographical oddities. One that I earned about from another youtube video (the "Itchy Boots" motorcycle travel channel) is the Tatacoa Desert in Colombia. It is a very small desert about 90 miles due east of Cali. It looks to be only about 100 square miles. If you pull up street view images the flora looks similar to the American southwest. But it is surrounded by lush tropics.
South America has quite a few geographical oddities. On Google Earth if you look at the towns of Iruya and Isla de Cañas, Argentina, one is in a nearly treeless high desert and other is in a lush rainforest. Yet as the crow flies the two towns are only about 35 miles apart.
There are what is called Carolina Bays which are found along the Eastern Seaboard from New York to Georgia. They are elliptical in shape and all seem to aligned with a single point to the Northwest. There are also what are called Rainwater Basins in Nebraska, of the same shape, but are aligned with a point to the Northeast. A theory that is evolving is that a meteor or comet hit the Saginaw Bay area of Michigan during the last ice age. According to the theory, large chunks of ice were blown in all directions, but only left craters where there was unconsolidated soil. This would be a wet sandy soil area in Nebraska and wet coastal areas on the East Coast. Of course, the ice chunks melted, leaving behind these relatively small craters. They gradually filled in with sediment and so are very shallow. They sometimes are hard to see, but show up better on LIDAR images.
LET'S GOOOO NEW TII VIDEOOO
Two possibly somewhat interesting features near me that may or may not be qualified for this, haha.
#1. A tree: It's not so much a geographical oddity, but it's still very unique. On Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina, and a few other high peaks around here, there is a very specific kind of tree called the Fraser Fir. It can only be found natively on the highest peaks in the appalachian highlands, but you can find it often used as christmas trees! It's in danger due to the invasive balsam woolly adelgid, which threatens it. If you go to Mount Mitchell especially you can see the majority of them actually dying out, with fewer live trees than there appear to be.
#2. Cades Cove in the Smokies:
Cades cove is a valley in the smoky mountains national park that has eroded away from the mountains around it into a fairly large valley that is now a protected area itself after being somewhat recently abandoned with remaining buildings that still stand to this day. I think basically the weaker rocks got eroded away into this valley while the mountains stand. There are also caves, including the 'deepest in tennessee' but that's not an oddity!
Extra mentions I just randomly know of. Yes, I'm interested in this type of thing. I'm about to begin a major in geosciences. This places are unique viewed on satellite or terrain maps on google maps, or obviously, visiting in person.
Burkes Garden, Virginia
The Outer Banks, North Carolina (Of course this one is unique!)
Pawtuckaway State Park, New Hampshire. This one is also an old volcano ring.
Outside the united states, an honorable mention is the Banks Peninsula Volano, in New Zealand. That looks pretty darn neat.
He’s back!
What about the Sandhills of north and South Carolina in the middle of the state, ancient sand dunes
As a geologist I can say he did his research ✔️
As an expert in salt tectonics, that’s not how salt domes are formed and they don’t carry oil with them. Your university failed.
It was actually a oil company that drilled into lake peigneur, they accidentally breached the salt mine which had people working inside of it at the time
Craney flat is pretty interesting for a manmade one. Lake Drummond in the Dismal swamp being large but also very shallow across the entire lake. Natural Chimneys in Augusta, natural tunnel, mole hill volcano, and Mountain lake
Sequim, Washington gets about the same amount of precipitation as Los Angeles around 16 inches of rain per year, despite being only 60 miles away from the Hoh rainforest in Forks which gets around 100 inches of rain per year.
Everyone: Oklahoma is flat farmland
Me, who lives in some low rolling mountains called the Arbuckles: ... sure.
They aren't really an anomaly, just an ancient mountain range that has been slowly eroded into something more akin to big, steep hills. But they are also a prime place to find paleozoic fossils due to their age. I would love to see them talked about.
Another good nomination could be the Carolina bays
Though I grew up on Crowley's Ridge in Arkansas, I did not appreciate how geographically significant it was until I was an adult.
It's located in northeastern Arkansas parallel to and about 35 miles from the Mississippi River.
The great New Madrid earth quake of 1812 - 1813 occurred just north of Crowley's Ridge.
I grew up in Forrest City, Arkansas on the western ascent of the ridge not far from the St Francis River and the White River both of which are indirect tributaries of the Mississippi.
The ridge presents an amazing sight when approached from the east or west, because all the land for 100 miles on the west and 35 miles on the east forms the flood plain of the Mississippi River.
On road trips back to Forrest City, the ridge even when many miles away serves as a heart warming confirmation that my childhood home is not far away.
Though I left Arkansas on 1966, I still hold a strong attachment to Crowley's ridge. Some people may consider parts of it as mountains.
Geologists say that the ridge once separated the Missouri and Ohio Rivers as they flowed down to the Gulf of Mexico.
I live right outside of Yuba City,California and see the Sutter Buttes Everyday they are neat.
I live in Sutter County too, and can see the Buttes pretty easily on my way to work. It's pretty cool!
Chimney rock in Nebraska is a pretty unique rock formation in a state usually thought of as only farmland
No farm land in the Sandhills, which is a good quarter of the state, eastern half is farm, western not so much
I suggest the Pinnacles National Park area in central California. This is an area of rock formations that has been physically moved many miles from its original source due to tectonic activity.
There's a section of some mountain range in Montana or Wyoming that didn't get thrusted upwards but instead, rode over the plate and bulldozed it way to the east for 30 miles before coming to a stop. Then there's a mountain valley in the Canadian Rockies that runs in a straight line for several hundreds of miles. Geologists also noticed that small islands had sailed across the Pacific Ocean to slam into the Western coastline since there's sections of mountain ranges that hold rock formations completely different than the rest of the range and each other.
I live near what some may call a geographic anomaly! It is called the Palmer divide, and it is basically a string of foothills near the front range. The weird part about it is that it is perpendicular to the front range, not seen with many other foothills. It is a very important part of the area in which is sits, as it causes weather patterns that allow the Black Forest to grow where there would normally be grasslands. It also contributes to a tornado hot-spot east of Denver.
Southeast OH is quite different than what most ppl perceive ohio to be like, basically diet Appalachia, theres also several very small old growth forests scattered in rural areas preserved by legacy land owners
The Little Sahara Desert in Beaver, Oklahoma, as well as the Sweetgrass mountains in Montana are two geographic anomalies that I’ve witnessed for myself
Take a look into the Roan Mountain range in East Tennessee! It’s saddled in between TN and NC near Virgina. It’s odd because unlike the majority of mountains in the area, the peaks of Roan Mountain are balds, so there’s 360 degree views. From my understanding, there’s not a clear reason why these peaks are tree-less, as it’s not an alpine zone, though I do believe there’s a Cherokee myth about it. Regardless, it’s a geographical oddity and insanely beautiful so perhaps it’s something to look at!
For geographic anomalies you might check out the Azores plateau, which coring and sampling have revealed has continental crust and subaerial limestone thousands of feet below sea level. Randall Carslson did a whole podcast about it being a basis for Atlantis, but it's interesting even if you don't buy into the Atltantis part.
Thanks for the awesome video! I could watch on this topic for hours. If you end up doing worldwide anomalies, one I find shocking is that Iran has a rain forest. Another is that Sweden’s seemingly continuous land mass contains over 200,000 islands
That Avery Is. picture looks like a textbook example of either a dead volcano with its hard core remaining after most of the rest has degraded or like a ring wall crater with central portion intact. I wonder what geologists have had to say about these things. This is another of your infrequent but extremely interesting videos.
There are parts of the Andes Mountains where one side is lush tropical rainforest and the other is arid desert, separated by only a few miles. One could drive between the two in an hour or two.
Correction. It was an oil company that caused the Lake Peigneur disaster. Contractors by Texaco miscalculated the drilling coordinates and accidentally penetrated the Diamond Crystal Salt company's mine. The salt company was not at fault.
Could you make one on strange geographical phenomenoms in China? They have that stone forest, bumpy yellow river hills and other wacky stuff lol
I'm fascinated that only 1/3 of China is densely populated in the east. The western 2/3 is desert and rocky land due to the Himalayas pushing the land northeastward. There are pockets of green lands and valleys in this region, such as Xinjiang where they now grow cotton. This is also where the ancient Spice Road came around the northern edge of the impassable Himalayas.