Learn About the Ice Age Floods, and Much MORE! During the most recent Ice Age (18,000 to 13,000 years ago), and probably in previous Ice Ages, the greatest known glacial-outburst floods in the America’s inundated portions of the Pacific Northwest.

Scientific study of the Ice Age Floods is contributing to the understanding of cyclical climate change and of very large and destructive contemporary floods on Earth. The Ice Age Floods have also been considered as an analog to understand geologic processes on Mars, where land-forms strikingly similar to those in Eastern Washington exist.

The map below shows a growing collection of locations and information about Ice Age Floodscapes (landscapes affected by the Ice Age Floods). Use Ctrl+Scroll to zoom, click-hold to drag the map around, click on markers for details, photos, and links to more information.

Field Trips, Presentations and Other Events are designed to educate, entertain and leave you with a sense of “wow” along with providing fascinating information about the Ice Age Floods. IAFI Upcoming Events Calendar

This 3:50 minute animation, presented by the Crown Point Country Historical Society, illustrates the growth of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, the damming and back-up of Glacial Lake Missoula, and the progress of an Ice Age Flood through WA and OR after an ice dam collapse.

We encourage visitors to suggest locations of significant Ice Age Floods, geologic, or historic cultural sites and features that we should add to our IAFI Features maps. Approximate Feature Location *

Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail The Ephrata Erratics Fan is a depositional area south of where water from the Missoula floods poured out of the lower Grand Coulee. It is called a fan because the deposit is spread out like a fan or delta.

Ice Age Floods Around the World (03 December 2023) The last ice age of Earth involved immense floods with peak flows comparable to those of ocean currents. About 40 examples are now known from Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Iceland.

Ice Age Floods Institute (IAFI) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, non-profit educational organization (EIN 91-1658221), founded in 1995 and recognized as an official authority on the Ice Age Floods, providing accurate, scientific-based advice to members and the public.

Glacial Lake Missoula was formed by a massive lobe of the Pleistocene Cordilleran ice sheet that blocked the mouth of the Clark Fork River at Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, a result of successive advances of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet during the Ice Age, when mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and giant ground sloths still roamed the landscape.