What is the only river to flow south to north?

Key Points: Most rivers in the world flow downhill, often South, due to gravity. The Nile River is an exception to this rule, flowing from South to North. Other rivers have the ability to flow different directions due to where sloping occurs away from their headwaters.



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According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, four of the world's 10 longest rivers flow generally northward: the Nile, the Mackenzie-Peace (in Canada) the Ob and the Lena (in Siberia). In fact, NASA says that there are rivers flowing north on every continent.

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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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Antarctica river There's a river that flows uphill beneath one of Antarctica's ice sheets, according to Robin Bell, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York.

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Although the reversal of the Chicago River was hailed as a public health and engineering triumph, the populations of several lakefront suburbs grew and continued dumping their own waste into Lake Michigan.

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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 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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There is absolutely nothing weird about a river flowing north. Rivers flow in one direction all over the world, and that direction is downhill. Across the central and eastern United States, it is rare for rivers to flow north because the slope of the land is toward the south and east.

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Over millions of years, much of this water is recycled between the inner Earth, the oceans and rivers, and the atmosphere. This cycling process means that freshwater is constantly made available to Earth's surface where we all live. Volcanoes release massive amounts of water from the inner Earth to the atmosphere.

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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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All rivers flow to the ocean Except for the driest deserts, every place on Earth has a connection to the ocean through a river. Even the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest, is connected to the sea by flowing water. Because of their connectivity, rivers gave rise to human civilization.

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