Glacial Lake Missoula
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Glacial Lake Missoula was a prehistoric proglacial lake in western Montana that existed periodically at the end of the last ice age between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. The lake measured about 7 770 km² (3,000 square miles) and contained about half the volume of Lake Michigan.
The lake was the result of an ice dam on the Clark Fork River caused by the southern encroachment of a finger of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet into the Idaho Panhandle. The height of the ice dam typically approached 610 m (2,000 feet), flooding the valleys of western Montana approximately 320 km (200 miles) eastward.
The periodic rupturing of the ice dam resulted in the Missoula Floods, which swept across Eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge approximately 40 times during a 2,000 year period.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- PBS's NOVA (TV series): Mystery of the Megaflood for information on the Missoula Floods
| Glacial Lake Missoula | Missoula Floods | Channeled scablands | Grand Coulee | Dry Falls | Drumheller Channels | Columbia River Plateau | Wallula Gap | Touchet Formation | Lake Lewis | Columbia River Gorge | Columbia River Basalt Group | Palouse Falls | Sims Corner Eskers and Kames | Moses Coulee | Withrow Moraine | Crab Creek
