coulee

plural coulees · alternative coulée · alternative cooley

1. A stream, especially one in the western US or Canada, generally smaller than a bayou; it may (or may not) run dry in summer, may be sluggish, shallow, and wide (forming in effect a pond or slough), or may have formerly cut a deep gulch or ravine, but at present run dry.

   The small streams and coulees which flow into the Mississippi River in the area are firmly entrenched by the natural topography, and little lateral migration is possible.

   1982, State Road and Ebner Coulees Flood Control Project, ..., page 16

   1 more example

   […] Mauvaise Coulee enters Devils Lake from the north, but it cannot be said to drain the lakes with which it is connected. It is itself a long-drawn-out slough or pool which is broader at those places where it spreads out into lakes. […] the head streams or coulees of the Park, the Forest and the Turtle, have all cut deep channels down through the drift into the underlying shales. This is because of the fall from the top of the high plateau down to the low prairie. […] all the larger lakes upon this plateau have already been tapped by the head coulees of the streams named.

   1907, Daniel Everett Willard, The Story of the Prairies, page 168

2. Mississippi Delta regionA reach of water in a bayou that is like a slough but deeper.

   We were in a coulee, which is like a slough but deeper and with slushier muds at the bottom.

   1989, John McPhee, The Control of Nature, →ISBN, page 73

3. geographyA lava flow (whether molten or solidified).

   The edge of a coulee, or stream of solidified lava, though ordinarily a very low escarpment, is exceptionally of such size as to deserve attention in the present connection.

   1928, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, page 43

1. A rural municipality in south-west Saskatchewan, Canada; in full, the Rural Municipality of Coulee No. 136.
2. An unincorporated community in Mountrail County, North Dakota, United States.