I found this to be interesting, and possibly quite relevant.

" One objection to the idea of an impact origin for the lunar craters was the fact that all lunar craters are round. Astronomers assumed that most meteorites would have struck the moon at oblique angles, producing elongated craters. Barringer, however, had experimented by firing rifle bullets into rocks and mud, and had discovered that a projectile arriving at an oblique angle would nevertheless make a round hole. In 1923, Barringer's 12-year-old son Richard published an article in Popular Astronomy, using his father's rifle experiments to argue for the impact origin of the lunar craters; Barringer himself repeated the arguments a short time later in the Scientific American."

THE BARRINGER METEORITE CRATER

Hi,

not just carolina - this type of feature covers an area of hundreds of square miles to the south west of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This is a great one where the road not only crosses the lake, but there is a T-Junction in the middle of the lake. Driving over them, I got the impression that the rise in water levels is recent as they have flooded roads and fences.

Daniel

Quote:

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" One objection to the idea of an impact origin for the lunar craters was the fact that all lunar craters are round. Astronomers assumed that most meteorites would have struck the moon at oblique angles, producing elongated craters. Barringer, however, had experimented by firing rifle bullets into rocks and mud, and had discovered that a projectile arriving at an oblique angle would nevertheless make a round hole. In 1923, Barringer's 12-year-old son Richard published an article in Popular Astronomy, using his father's rifle experiments to argue for the impact origin of the lunar craters; Barringer himself repeated the arguments a short time later in the Scientific American."

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Thing is, not all craters are round. At very shallow angles, oval craters are created.



From Why are craters round?

There is more at A RE-EVALUATION OF THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGIN OF THE CAROLINA BAYS

About 140 miles north of the Saint Martin, Manitoba, Canada impact crater and 1500 miles northwest of most major "Bays" lies a large lake (Lake Agassiz) with similar appearance to the "Bays" of the Eastern US. This oval shape is very apparent on the north end of the 115 mile long lake. If you follow the majority of Eastern US bays orientation back on a line northwest, you come very close to this lake.

A highly oblique impact here 13 thousand years ago would have struck the glacial ice sheet of the last ice age sending millions of tons of thick glacial ice on a low southeast trajectory.

However much geologic study has been done around this lake the past 100 years and nothing points to a terrestrial impacter. There are some interesting anomalies though.

Just north of the lake are a couple of flood deltas presumably laid down by rapid melting of glacial ice into what amounts to a rivers running under the existing ice sheet.

User ThomasFlores made quite an extensive placemark folder showing probable "bays" he found here.

I posted some information in the earth brosing forum which may help his discussion.

Carolina Bays in Cumberland County, NC
11/11/07 08:24 AM
Contains locations and data for 118 Carolina Bays Found in Cumberland County, NC.
The data was digitized from LIDAR DEM or calculated from digitized data.

Edited by john2242b (11/12/07 11:04 PM)

In Florida there are low oblong hills called "hammocks" that are all oriented in the same direction. The opposite of craters. Could these be formed by weather?
By wave action millions of years ago when the area was under water?
Could the bays be related in any way?

Searching for further evidence of an exploding meteor, Firestone and his team went looking for Wooly Mammoth ivory. They didn't find exactly what they were looking for, but found something of interest anyway. There is more about this discovery here.

Watching these images, especially the arctic ones, one thing comes to mind: prevailing winds. If the "original" lake is somewhat round and the wind direction is pretty much the same year round it would make sense that one side of the lake is more eroded than the others. Waves beat the shore and soil is transported as the surface layer of water moves with the wind and the bottom layer to the opposite direction. Depending on the type of soil and the strength and direction variance of the wind the lake would be more or less elongated.

Or maybe it works the opposite way; the winds in North Carolina are generally from the southwest. Maybe small scale tests would show which way (if any) is more propable.

[Edit]
From this page : "On Alaska's North Slope, the prevailing winds blow perpendicular to the long axes of the lakes. According to the traditional explanation, such winds set up currents within the lakes that erode the banks, particularly at the lakes' ends. Such currents would erode coarse-grained, sandy soils faster than fine-grained clay soils."

Sorry, the wind/water theory of creation of the Carolina Bays has been debunked recently. The more likely mechanism is a cometary impact.