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.

Right this moment 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 trying ahead to my first sight of Victoria Falls, a Surprise of the Pure World.

Regionally referred to as Mosi-oa-Tunya [MOsee O TOONya] , “The Smoke That Thunders” is properly named within the Sotho language. Its thundering noise could be heard 25 miles away whereas its mist rises to 1,300 ft. When David Livingstone was scouting the Zambezi River in 1855, on the lookout for a commerce path to the ocean, guides helped him get to an island close to the cliff edge the place he regarded 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 classed as the biggest, primarily based 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.

— Wikipedia: Victoria Falls

Earlier than I noticed an aerial picture of the falls I assumed its complete span may very well be seen from a distance as we do at Niagara Falls, however it’s inconceivable 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 under.

The origin of Victoria Falls started within the Late Jurassic in the course of 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 far-off because it flowed south to hitch 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 large on the flat basalt then zigzags after the falls because it follows the fault traces, as seen on this picture from the Worldwide Area Station.

• The current day waterfall is the eighth location for the reason that falls started. Erosion continues up the watershed. The marked up map under exhibits the primary seven falls in yellow, the present waterfall in blue, and two future fall traces in pink.

Study extra concerning the falls on this 5 minute video. (Apparently the script is learn by a pc).

The massive query as I write this text a month forward of time is that this: How a lot water will probably 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 yr and certainly one 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 are going to take a look at birds.