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22 January 2024: Day 4, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe — Street Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click on right here to see (typically) the place I’m right this moment.
As we speak we fly north from Johannesburg to the city of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, a distance of 574 miles (925 km) — about the identical as Atlanta to Pittsburgh. I’m wanting ahead to my first sight of Victoria Falls, a Marvel of the Pure World.
Domestically referred to as Mosi-oa-Tunya [MOsee O TOONya] , “The Smoke That Thunders” is properly named within the Sotho language. Its thundering noise will be heard 25 miles away whereas its mist rises to 1,300 toes. When David Livingstone was scouting the Zambezi River in 1855, in search of a commerce path to the ocean, guides helped him get to an island close to the cliff edge the place he appeared down on the cascade and named it for Queen Victoria — Victoria Falls.
Whereas it’s neither the very best nor the widest waterfall on the earth, the Victoria Falls is assessed as the biggest, based mostly on its mixed width of 1,708 metres (5,604 ft [more than a mile]) and peak of 108 metres (354 ft), ensuing on the earth’s largest sheet of falling water. The Victoria Falls are roughly twice the peak of North America’s Niagara Falls and properly over twice its width.
Earlier than I noticed an aerial picture of the falls I believed its total span might be considered from a distance as we do at Niagara Falls, but it surely’s not possible to see the entire sheet of water from the bottom as a result of Victoria Falls plunges right into a crack!
This is because of its uncommon geology, illustrated on the Victoria Falls Nationwide Park marker in Zimbabwe. Have a look and I’ll summarize it beneath.
The origin of Victoria Falls started within the Late Jurassic through the time of the dinosaurs.
- 150 million years in the past a volcano erupted and poured a lake of lava on the web site of Victoria Falls. The lava hardened into basalt rock. The rock cooled and cracked into fault traces.
- Sand blew in and deeply stuffed the faults and lined the basalt. The Zambezi River was distant because it flowed south to affix the Limpopo.
- 5 million years in the past the south land in current day Botswana rose up and divided the Zambezi River from the Limpopo, forcing the Zambezi to go east.
- The Zambezi eroded the sandy floor and flowed extensively over the basalt. When it discovered a fault it fell into the crack as a waterfall.
- The river is broad on the flat basalt then zigzags after the falls because it follows the fault traces, as seen on this picture from the Worldwide House Station.
- The current day waterfall is the eighth location for the reason that falls started. Erosion continues up the watershed. The marked up map beneath reveals the primary seven falls in yellow, the present waterfall in blue, and two future fall traces in pink.
Be taught extra concerning the falls on this 5 minute video. (Apparently the script is learn by a pc).
The large query as I write this text a month forward of time is that this: How a lot water might be coming over the falls? October to March is the moist season so the river ought to be operating excessive. Nonetheless that is an El Niño 12 months and one in every of its world results is to decrease rainfall on this a part of Africa. So we will see …
The dry season in 2019 was so extreme that the falls slowed to a trickle.
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at birds.
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