Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator
Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator
Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator
What it does

Watch Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator fill the valleys of western Montana.

The simulator lets you change lake level, explore inundated terrain, and understand the scale of the Ice Age lake and the floods released when its ice dam failed.

Explore the lake as a changing landscape
  1. 05:48
    Pre-trip

    NaturalistTripper builds a route. Place caches geology and ownership.

  2. 06:24
    On the ground

    Montana Field Guide opens to species accounts without signal.

  3. 10:30
    Capture & log

    Photographs land in Lightroom. Flyway Birding logs the count.

  4. evening
    Publish

    GeoPlace tags every photograph. iNat Publish Pro batches the day.

Interactive geology

See familiar places under hundreds of feet of water.

The app turns an abstract geologic event into an explorable landscape-scale model.

Real photograph · App screenshot
Water level

Raise and lower the lake

Move through different lake stages and see which valleys, benches, and communities would have been submerged.

Real photograph · App screenshot
Place

Explore the landscape around you

Use maps and location-aware views to connect present-day terrain with the former lake basin and flood history.

Real photograph · App screenshot
Interpretation

Understand the flood story

Use concise geologic explanations to connect the ice dam, lake cycles, shorelines, and catastrophic outburst floods.

Scope and limits

A learning and visualization tool, not a precision hazard model.

Sources
  • Modern elevation data
  • Mapped Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator shorelines and geologic interpretation
  • Published regional Ice Age flood research
  • Location services on your device
Honest limitations
  • The simulation simplifies a complex and repeatedly changing glacial-lake system.
  • Displayed shorelines and water depths are interpretive approximations.
  • The app is educational and is not intended for navigation, engineering, or hazard forecasting.
FAQ

Common questions.

Is the app free?

Yes. Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator is a free educational app.

Does it show the exact lake at one single moment?

No. The lake changed repeatedly through time, and the simulator presents an interpretable range of water levels rather than one definitive snapshot.

Is it available on Android?

Check the current download page for platform availability.

Explore it

Put an Ice Age lake back into the landscape.

Download Missoula Ice Age Floods Simulator and explore western Montana through deep time.