What is the only river that flows north in North America?

There are countless examples of rivers flowing northward. Some of the most famous are the world's longest river the Nile, along with Russia's Ob, Lena, and Yenisey Rivers. The Red River in the U.S. and Canada and Florida's St. Johns River also flow north.



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A more precise total should consist of thousands of rivers. It is safe to say that over 250 major rivers in the world actually flow north.

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Another common misconception is that only two world's rivers, St. Johns River (US) and River Nile (Africa), flow north. The truth is that the two rivers are examples of the many rivers that flow northwards. However, the exact number of the northward-flowing rivers has not been established.

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The Nile. The most famous river that flows north is also the longest river in the world: the Nile, which passes through 11 different countries in northeastern Africa. The river's principal tributaries are the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

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Why the Tonle Sap River Is Unlike Any Other River in the World. In this week's Maphead column, Ken Jennings explains how one river in Cambodia ends up changing direction a few times every year.

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The Everglades is the world's slowest-moving river. When rain fills Lake Okeechobee, in south-central Florida, the lake overflows into the 50-foot wide, 1.5 million acre water filtration system and flows about one meter an hour toward the Gulf of Mexico, at the southern tip of the Sunshine State.

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Water always flows down to the sea, and the land slopes downward through the Great Lakes Basin from west to east, but the Niagara River actually flows north. Today, less than one percent of the water of the Great Lakes is renewable on an annual basis (precipitation and groundwater).

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It always does — right? But under Antarctica's ice, water can sometimes run uphill. Under the right conditions, a whole river can spurt from one lake uphill to another lake. That's because the ice weighs so much that it presses down on the water with thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch.

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The Chicago River Actually Flows Backwards.

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Do rivers flow upstream or downstream? Usually, rivers flow downstream, but there are some that don't. This can happen when rivers flow south to north due to the source of the river being higher up in the South. One famous river that has this type of flow is the Nile River in Africa.

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Florida is the only state that has two rivers that have the same name. There is a Withlacoochee River in Madison County and a Withlacoochee River located in central Florida.

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The Congo is the deepest river in the world. Its headwaters are in the north-east of Zambia, between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa (Malawi), 1760 metres above sea level; it flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

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The Yellowstone River flows northward through Yellowstone National Park, feeding and draining Yellowstone Lake, then dropping over the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls at the head of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone within the confines of the park.

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Water flows in the path of least resistance – there are rivers and tributaries all over the world that flow east, west, north, and south. The St. Johns flows north because its headwaters are a mere 27 feet higher in elevation than where it ends – dropping approximately one inch per mile over the course of 310 miles.

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