Science Friday! Have you ever wondered how Glacial Lake Missoula impacted Missoula’s drinking water? Today we are going to be exploring this question!
Here’s a little bit of background- about 12,000 years ago, an ice dam holding 2,000 foot deep Glacial Lake Missoula within the valleys of Western Montana, burst. Flood waters moving at 386 million cubic feet per second or 60 times the flow of the Amazon River rushed overland tearing away soils and mountainsides.
The flood deposited millions of tons of cobble and gravel, which over time, filled the Missoula valley and created the Missoula valley aquifer which now supports more than 40,000 households.
Every year rainfall and snowmelt flow out of the Clark Fork River and local streams to seep down through glacial deposits and recharge this underground water source. This natural storage tank contains billions of gallons of fresh water, which in some places is only 40 feet below our feet!
As spring is sneaking up on us, and all of that snow melts, it’s fun to think that as it travels into rivers and gets absorbed by those ancient deposits set as a foundation by the glacial lake floods millions of years ago! Cool!
Information cited from City of Missoula & Montana Natural History Center’s page glaciallakemissoula.org.
