Why do only two rivers flow north?

While it is true that most rivers flow south, some rivers actually flow from south to north. Since the direction of flow is influenced mostly by topography, some headwaters or sources (mountains) are located to the south of the mouth or destination. In this case, the river will flow in a northerly direction.



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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Nile River, Arabic Ba?r Al-Nil or Nahr Al-Nil, the longest river in the world, called the father of African rivers. It rises south of the Equator and flows northward through northeastern Africa to drain into the Mediterranean Sea.

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