Why is it rare for rivers to flow north?

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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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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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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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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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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Other rivers that flow south to north include: St. John's River in Florida, the San Joaquin River in California, the Red River running through several southern states, the Shennandoah in Virginia and West Virginia, the Ob, Yenisey and Lena Rivers in Russia, and the Mackenzie River in Canada, to name just a few.

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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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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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Eventually, between 1960 and 1980, as Lake Powell began to fill behind Glen Canyon Dam, the Colorado River stopped flowing regularly to the sea. In the popular imagination, the Colorado River was broken, and its delta was dead. But as it happens, the delta wasn't dead at all.

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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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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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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 Mississippi River rises in Lake Itasca in Minnesota and ends in the Gulf of Mexico. It covers a total distance of 2,340 miles (3,766 km) from its source. The Mississippi River is the longest river of North America.

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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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