groups

Thanks Thomas , that was a completely new one to me . The bays appear to be all sort of oblong on a southeast to northwest axis . I wonder if a large meteor striking off the coast to the southeast could have produced them , with a sort of exploding spatter effect .

Never heard of those. They almost look like the craters on the moon.

Most studies preclude a meteor strike as most extra-terrestrial strikes produce round craters. One of the theories that has some support has them being formed as the oceans receded but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why in that case would they not be everywhere there were oceans?

They exist from New Jersey to Florida, and in the Gulf of Mexico off several states -- that's a hell of a lot of meteors, lol ...

New to me too, and your link just sucked me into a hour of steady reading, jumping around several more links, and thinking about how mysterious our planet can be. Thanks!

PS they're in South America and Africa too. And of course there were the inevitable "aliens did it" theories. Don't you just love the way the human mind works?

MM

Here's another link with some really good aerial pics of Bays.

view link

Weird little things aren't they, lol... They'll keep our “little” imaginations going for quite some time ...

this is good some info i found
Carolina bays:
27,000 year s of age Pleistocene era Run from s. Carolina around Florida to La.& north to Wisconsin
Tend to be bi –model and aligned in a similar direction in the south but as the bays move north their orientation becomes random where they are aligned the southeast ridge tends to be deeper.
ideas: post the last ice age the ice sheet never reached the carolinas scraped out boulders in fromt ofthe ice sheet. (NO)
the orientation of the bays are interesting usualy the S.E. ridge is deeper as if that would be the end of somethinf striking and pushing into the earth. plus the orientation changes as the locations of the bays move norhtward. random in the norh an alignment in the south When a jet dops a cluster bomb it explodes in the air the direct & force ofthe jet propels the front end of the cluster into an alignment while the bombs that are let go right ubder the jet do not have the same force so they head straight down unaligned. of course there were no cluster bonbs man made but a comet or an asteroid shower might have a similar effect? just a theory If it is travelling at 1 thousand miles per hour or so, even with the atmspheric pressure + earhs gravity it could cover from the Morth to the South if it was large enough to break into so many pieces. getting too into this. How far off am I?
yichel

Yichel , it is along the lines of what I was thinking .

You've got me yichel, there are so many theories. I do know that the ones in SC have a noticeable sand ridge on the northwest edges. The one that I lived on had standing water in at all times, even in times of drought and the vegetation was junglelike, but it was a large one compared to most. I saw another theory today that had a meteor shower hitting a shallow sea and upon that sea receding the sand was built up on the northwest side from wave action and the rest was filled in somewhat and elongated dependent upon the route the water took, they are interesting geological features though.