C. Wylie Poag, in "The Chgesapeake Bay Bolide Impact: A Convulsive
Event in Atlantic Coalstal Plain Evolution", Sedimentary Geology
108(1997):45-90 writes that a meteor made Chesapeake Bay
"Until recently, Cenozoic evolution of the Atlantic Coastal Plain
has been viewed as a subcyclical continuum of deposition and erosion. Marine
transgressions alternated with regressions on a slowly subsiding passive
continental margin, their orderly succession modified mainly by isostatic
adjustments, occasional Appalachian tectonism, and paleoclimatic change.
This passive scenario was dramatically transformed in the late Eocene,
however,, by a bolide impact on the inner continental shelf. The resultant
crater is now buried 400-500 m beneath lower Chesapeake Bay, its
surrounding peninsulas, and the continental shelf east of Delmarva Peninsula.
This convulsive event, and the giant tsunami it engendered, fundamentally
changed the regional geological framework and depositional regime of the
Virginia coastal Plain, and produced the following prinicple consequences.
(1) The impact excavated a roughly circular crater, twice the size of
Rhode Island (~6400 km^2) and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon (~1.3 KM
deep). (2) The excavation truncated all existing ground-water aquifers
in the target area by gouging ~4300 km^3 of rock from the upper lithosphere,
including Proterozoic and Paleozoic crystalline basement rocks and Middle
Jurassic to upper Eocene sedimentary rocks. (3)Synimpact depositional
processes, including ejecta fallback, massive crater-wall failure,
water column collapse, and tsunami backwash, filled the crater with a
porous breccia lens, 600-1200 m thick, at a phenomenal rate of ~`1200m/hr.
The breccia lens replaced the truncated ground-water aquifers with a single
4300 km^3 reservoir, characterized by ground water ~1.5 times saltier than
normal sea water (chlorinities as high as 25,700 mg/l). (4) A structural
and topographic low, created by differential subsidence of the compacting
breccia, persisted over the crater at least through the Pleistocene.
In the depression are preserved post impact marine
lithofacies and biofacies (upper Eocene, lower Oligocene, lower Miocene)
not known elsewhere in the Virginia Coastal Plain. (5) Long-term differential
compaction and subsidence of the breccia lens spawned extensive fault
systems in the postimpact strata. Many of these faults appear to reach
the bay floor, and may be potential hazards for motion-sensitive structures
in population centers around Cesapeake Bay. Near surface fracturing and
faulting generated by the impact shock may extend as far as 90 km from the
crater rim. (6) Having never completely filled with postimpact sediments, the
sea-floor depression over the crater appears to have predetermined the
location of Chesapeake Bay. (7) As large impact craters are principal sources
for some of the world's precious metals, it is reasonable to expect that
metal enriched sills, dikes, and metal sheets are present in the inner
basin of the crater." p. 45
Stake your claim to Cape Charles. The point is that this occurred in
the middle of what should be the flood deposits according to the
yec interpretation. If the earth had been bombarded by as many
meteor impacts during that year, as we observe today on earth,
nothing would have lived. We worry about one impact like
Chixulub in Mexico which wiped out the dinosaurs. What would it be
like if there were 130 of those type impacts all around the world?
Spreading these things out, so that only one at a time hits allows the
earth and life to recover from the devastation.