List of rivers by discharge | Hacker News Reader

List of rivers by discharge

en.wikipedia.org

120 pointsabudabi123130 comments

I feel its worth asking questions about the talk page. Specifically:

> Most of the data in this article is sourced from somebody calling himself Intergalactic Power and Light. Some random guy's personal web page does not constitute a reliable source. Dricherby (talk) 18:24, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The link is unfortunately broken, but if anyone has more details that would be fascinating.

Last valid Web Archive capture was on August 5th 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110805041437/http://home.comca...

"Page created 2003-08-23 and last revised 2005-07-31."

Page also has no sources of its own.

Checking Mekong (Which I would have thought higher) it's correct by this source -

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b3463307-en/index.html?i...

Annual - 475 km3 - 475*1000*1000*1000/365/24/3600 = 15062 m3/s

Any others seem odd?

oh the talk page comment is old enough that I assume its mostly been fixed, although the Urubamba-Caura length discrepancy noted by someone else on the talk page is still there. I was commenting more at the fascination of 'Intergalactic Power and Light' maintaining for a while a webpage focused on river lengths. It feels like a callback to an earlier era

The individual pages for each of the rivers (or atleast the first three I tried) have the discharges with different seemingly more trustworthy sources, if anyone wants to edit the page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_River

I am surprised that the Nile is only at 105th, far below even the Danube and the Volga. It holds such prominence in Western history that I naively expected it to be in the top 5.

I am also surprised. This might be because the river is highly seasonal, and it is a source of significant irrigation, so its discharge into the Mediterranean is limited.

I remember taking a flight from Nairobi to Luxor which flew along the Nile for a long long way... It doesn't really surprise me - it is flowing through vast deserts for an awfully long distance.

The Nile is pretty significant for Egyptians, that's for sure:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nile_River_and_del...

Indeed to be explicit, there wouldn't be a large population center in Egypt without it

Sudan+South Sudan accounts for 55 millions. Roughly half of Egypt but still another significant population that depends on the nile.

My understanding is that discharge is what's left once the river reaches the sea. I am actually surprised that there is anything left, and I don't think there will be in the future. (both from Egypt and Ethiopia leveraging the river more for their needs).

The Nile is 2nd longest, for what it's worth, behind only the Amazon. And, to understate matters a little bit, it's in quite an arid region, so that its waters were quite literally the lifeblood of all Egyptian civilizations.

The Yellow River -- which, for its part, is quite literally the cradle of Chinese civilization -- is in a very similar position. It's the 6th largest river by length, but 113th by flow rate.

Perhaps, as others have just speculated, flow rate was once a lot higher, and now water is being diverted to agricultural and other projects, so that a much smaller fraction of it reaches the sea.

When you say “quite literally” you seem to mean “figuratively.” A river is not a cradle.

The use of "literally" in this context is so pervasive that any English dictionary will include it in its definition. This nit-picking is so pervasive that Merriam-Webster includes an FAQ on the words use.

"Can literally mean figuratively?

One of the definitions of literally that we provide is "in effect, virtually—used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible." Some find this objectionable on the grounds that it is not the primary meaning of the word, "with the meaning of each individual word given exactly." However, this extended definition of literally is commonly used and is not quite the same meaning as figuratively ("with a meaning that is metaphorical rather than literal").

Is the extended use of literally new?

The "in effect; virtually" meaning of literally is not a new sense. It has been in regular use since the 18th century and may be found in the writings of Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce, and many others.

Is the extended use of literally slang?

Among the meanings of literally is one which many people find problematic: "in effect, virtually—used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible." Neither this nor any of the other meanings of literally is what we would consider slang. This sense has been in standard use by many esteemed writers since the 18th century." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally)

You're not wrong, but it's a real shame that the English language keeps deteriorating this way. Most of the time, it's obvious from context what one means by 'literally' but not always. Why create extra ambiguity when there already exists other functional language constructs to express the same thought with clarity? It does make me wonder how much this happens in other languages, especially ones like French where there is an effort to keep the language from morphing too much, too quickly.

It's not "deterioration" just change. Deterioration implies deviation from a natural, ideal, or perfect state, which languages simply do not have. This belief that the language is in decline and losing some ineffable beauty or value is older than english, in fact some of our oldest historical documents at all are versions of this lament. The language we speak now is the result of millennia of such "deterioration."

Those language-control bodies that some countries have are somewhat a relic of before we had our current understanding of the mechanics of language use and how languages change over time. They can also be understood as a leftover tool from the european bootstrapping-nationstates era.

Either way, those bodies may (but it's debatable) have some influence on the rate the language change, or what specific changes occur. But nowhere near as much as they purport to, maybe close to none at all.

Eh. It's not a deterioration, it's just language. It's not like there was a carefully designed "one true language" in the past and this is a fallen world speaking only inferior pidgins.

Even in the bible, we can see Jesus starting a lot of stories with "truly, truly I say unto you..." followed by a parable.

> but it's a real shame that the English language keeps deteriorating this way

English is not Latin. It was born deteriorated.

I agree. Also, I dislike it, and the double emphasis provided by "quite" makes it even worse—how can something be especially non-metaphorical, or especially understood in the (already) "strongest admissible sense"?[0] Maybe my criticism should have been better targeted, but it's silly usage and I'm feeling like a SNOOT.[1]

[0] OED Online

[1] David Foster Wallace, Tense Present, available at https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

I will stop figuratively dying on this hill when English literally acquires a word that only means "literally" in the single sense of "not figuratively".

Wow, your post history shows your many attempts at protecting that hill: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... including this same complaint, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10846302 !

And one use, 6 years ago, where you did die on that hill, when you wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12738257

> It literally kills me how performant and impactful your code is to the many unique users that comprise the community. :-)

> Seriously, though, the original ...

If you're already dead then you can stop dying. :-)

Not to mention that English dictionaries have a definition for “cradle” like “a place, process, or event in which something originates or flourishes.” That river is literally that.

No, it isn’t. The definition is of a metaphor. A metaphor doesn’t become a literalism just because a dictionary included it.

The definition is of the word, not "of a metaphor." If you want to talk about the "original" meaning or "etymologically faithful" meaning or whatever, then go for it, but note that most modern baby cradles aren't at all baskets in the sense that the English word originated. That's because all words originate as imperfectly-specified references to things and concepts. The things and concepts and our references to them change over time.

> The definition is of the word, not "of a metaphor."

I don't really care to weigh in on the rest of this spat, but this isn't a contradiction: it is the case that a given sense of a word, listed in a dictionary, may yet be metaphorical—it is not the case that finding a definition of a word in a dictionary proves that that sense isn't metaphorical, and in fact, any common metaphorical usage of a word is quite likely to end up in a dictionary, at which point it does not (necessarily!) stop being metaphorical. (I find the rest of the post basically sound, for all the nothing my judgement on that is worth—this part is just not strong, is all)

I just think it’s a bit of a weird line to draw because you have to somehow choose how far back to go in the etymological history of the word and insist that every different meaning thereafter is “metaphorical.”

Personally I wouldn’t call usages that are so widely used and understood that they’re in every dictionary “figurative.”

Yes. But at this point in time, no one is looking at a river or valley and using the noun “cradle” to categorize it. I’m not saying it could never become a literalism—only that it remains metaphorical, as a way to invoke the idea of a birthplace.

Definition's etymology is literally from dēfīnīre, which was a Latin word that was originally used in the context of setting bounds to physical land. This then turned into setting bounds around the meaning of words.

One can't play fast and loose with how language works. Almost all words got their meaning through metaphor as society become more abstract and complex. Just because one doesn't like something doesn't make it less valid.

Then don't play fast and loose. Maybe one day we will look at a river or valley and use the word "cradle" in a non-metaphorical manner. Right now, we don't.

I'm very confused by your stance.

I get that cradle started out meaning "basket" (like definire started out meaning drawing boundaries), but now it literally also means the place where a civilizations started (like define literally means to describe a word).

Are you denying that process happens? Can words never expand in definition? What about computer terms like type? Can a person never literally type on a computer in any context ever?

Or should I just give up because this is a personal neurological thing that we will just disagree on forever due to differences in how we process inputs about the world?

Not denying that the process happens, and maybe it's irreconcilable. But I'll attempt to describe my position in more general terms.

The difference between "literal" and "figurative"/"metaphorical" is whether a term is being used as a first-order label for a thing in itself, or as a reference to another concept. That is, a figurative use of a term applies meaning by drawing on a distinct source of meaning.

Words (or idiomatic phrases) can become literal when their usage becomes so strongly identified with what they label that their meaning is no longer determined by reference. "Turn on" no longer involves turning, for example.

I agree that "definition" has become literal, because we no longer refer to the concept of boundaries each time we encounter the term. So too with "cradle": we imagine a particular object that isn't a basket, in itself.

I do not believe this is the case when someone calls the Yellow River the cradle of Chinese civilization. I believe that people hearing that term primarily understand "cradle" by reference to the baby-related object, rather than because the word has meaning in itself relating to the start of civilization. As evidence of this, I think attaching "of Chinese civilization" is doing meaningful work, and that most people would be thrown off by the abstract phrase "cradles around the world" or even by the more specific phrase "the Yellow River, China's cradle." They may still understand the speaker's meaning, but they would do so by connecting the metaphorical dots, not because "cradle" has become a literalism.

>a first-order label for a thing in itself

Let's bring this back to typing because I think it really helps. Typos from Greek refers to a physical mark or impression made by a stamp (not inherently letters, any physical impression). We then used that etymology to come up with 'type' to represent the blocks that deposited ink onto paper . Kind of a stretch, but I would still consider that a first order label in your framework. Great we are aligned.

But wait, I'm typing this comment and there's no physical impressions being made on paper. Am I not literally typing?

>we no longer refer to the concept of boundaries each time we encounter the term. So too with "cradle": we imagine a particular object that isn't a basket, in itself.

Sure, I'm not imagining a printing press, but whether or not I know it, I am making a metaphor to it. So if we stopped using the term 'cradle' to refer to a basket (therefore breaking the metaphor), then cradle becomes literal? Seems like a fragile/not useful distinction to me.

I think "whether or not [you] know it" is key. The definitions I'm advancing have to do with the subjective mental work you do (or don't do). I agree that "typing" is literal because we do not loop in the concept of physical type making an impression when we interpret or describe the action of fingers on a keyboard. The term has flown the nest, so to speak.

What about my last paragraph? Do you deny that there's a two-step process going on, or do you actually see the phrase "Chinese cradle" and interpret it to mean "birthplace of civilization" rather than first assuming it means a baby-related object produced in China?

Of course it's weak. This is all pedantry. But then again, "literal" now means both "literal" and "not literal" so maybe all linguistic distinctions are fragile. Less useful once they're destroyed, though—it would be nice if we had a word that meant "literal" without also meaning "not literal."

>What about my last paragraph? Do you deny that there's a two-step process going on, or do you actually see the phrase "Chinese cradle" and interpret it to mean "birthplace of civilization" rather than first assuming it means a baby-related object produced in China?

I didn't want to get off topic, but I speculate the most common usage of 'cradle' in American English is 'Cradle to Grave.' I didn't bring it up, since it torpedoes your argument (Cradle is used to mean infancy in this case, not a physical item), but it feels too nuanced to be a general argument.

>it would be nice if we had a word that meant "literal" without also meaning "not literal."

Actually, I think we do.

Quite the opposite: both cradles and graves are spots to lay human bodies, and both are being used metaphorically for times in one's life.

> I do not believe this is the case when someone calls the Yellow River the cradle of Chinese civilization. I believe that people hearing that term primarily understand "cradle" by reference to the baby-related object, rather than because the word has meaning in itself relating to the start of civilization.

I think I just factually disagree with you here. I think it would be very rare for a fluent English speaker to hear “cradle of civilization” and need to actually do the work of calling up the concept of a baby bed and make educated guesses about what metaphorical similarities the speaker is trying to evoke.

In fact, in American English I think it’s pretty rare to use “cradle” in informal speech to refer to a baby bed. “Crib” or even “bassinet” or “baby bed” are much more common. “Cradle” is in the lyrics of a well-known lullaby, but to use it in casual speech would be somewhat conspicuous. It’s much more common as a verb, like “cradle the baby in your arms,” which I suspect you would also describe as a metaphorical usage (and I would disagree).

No, we agree about the phrase. But that's the whole ballgame: if "cradle" independently referred to the place, there would be no need to say "of civilization." It's an idiomatic use that is expressly non-literal. We also agree that "cradle" as a verb is not metaphorical.

Whether "cradle" is more or less common than "crib" (say) doesn't indicate one way or another whether its usage in other contexts is as a first- or second-order signifier.

A dictionary having a definition in it isn't evidence a given usage is good. The primary mission of most dictionaries is to help people understand language they encounter, which may include ill-advised-to-use, misleading, ironic, code- or register-specific, or slang senses of words.

In this case, it was not a good idea to use the word "literally" this way, in this place. The clearest sign that it wasn't a good idea is that this discussion about the word is happening.

The literal literary contestation between descriptive and prescriptive dictionaries is alive and well[0], though the war has been lost, and your fellow prescriptivist have yet to surrender.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/the-d...

My? Descriptivist dictionaries are a good idea.

Apologies - I wrote that quickly in jest, and in any-case, it seems were on the same side of the descriptivist argument.

Claiming that things are OK because they are pervasive makes William Willerforce cry.

I think Merriam-Webster has this a little bit wrong, actually. It's not that it's a different meaning of the word, but that the word is being used hyperbolically. When someone says "you left me waiting for days" we don't say "sometimes days means minutes" and fret about how anyone will understand time. We say that people exaggerate. The fact that this use shows up pretty much right away is evidence that it's not a different sense of the word, but people doing an ordinary thing they do with any word we hand them.

I think you're right that it's an example of hyperbole. The important thing to understand in the context of this discussion though, is that hyperbole is not ungrammatical. It serves a function in a sentence to communicate emphasis or draw attention. Saying 'it is quite literally the cradle of Chinese civilization' is no less grammatical than saying 'I have a tonne of work to do' or 'downtown is dead on Monday nights'.

I don't think anyone was saying "{Noun phrase} is literally {other noun phrase}" is ever ungrammatical, just disagreeing about how often it's incorrect.

I'm afraid that complaints about the use of literally as an intensifier comes off as naive these days.

https://youtu.be/0p5oNM86Hgw?t=257

@4:17 "No one complains about "fabulous"... or "marvelous"... or even the word "very"... etymologically meaning true..."

I myself am coming to a place of acceptance about the use of "begs the question" to mean "raises the question". While I will never use it that way, I no longer literally grind my teeth to dust when I hear it.

To rebut the expert in the video, the seemingly obvious difference is that "literally" has changed suddenly and in my lifetime, and specifically to mean the opposite of its true definition vs. merely adding a meaning.

It isn't naivety for one to be bothered by it; it is grammatical laziness to misuse it. Maybe I will care less when poor kids born today misuse it in 20 years.

This is simply not true. According to Merriam-Webster, its use in a figurative context goes back 300 years. And hyperbole has a real function in language - it's not just laziness. Omitting 'quite literally', or worse, replacing it with 'figuratively' in the original sentence would communicate something quite different.

No-one should be suggesting replacing "quite literally" with "figuratively", but there is no problem with removing it altogether. It is pointless to introduce hyperbole here.

> We want writing to be transparent, clear, and easy to read.

Need I say more than the above quote to convince someone that the “figurative use of literally” should be avoided? I’d say the same of any other auto-antonym.

Language is a tool to communicate our meaning. When we use words that obscure our meaning, it ceases to serve its purpose.

Yes, I understand it is hyperbolic. Yes, I understand it has been used in this way for a long time. The reason that the author of this video has words like “very”, “ridiculous”, and “fabulous” to complain about is because nobody was a stickler about those words long ago, and they’ve now lost their meaning. Yet somehow, rather than encouraging people to use words to mean what they mean, he decides that since it’s happened before, we ought to accept it happening again. I don’t know why he would ever decide that is the rational decision.

Per Merriam Webster:

: a place of origin

the cradle of civilization

An accepted definition of "cradle" is a place of origin. Please do not spread misinformation with such confidence without first doing a Google search.

Our other thread fleshes this out, but there's a difference between widespread idiom and accepted definition. A dictionary's description of idiomatic use does not indicate that the term independently denotes the idiomatic meaning.

Similarly, if I say "cats and dogs," that isn't a measure of volume or intensity except where paired with "raining." Having to say "of civilization" indicates that "cradle" is being used metaphorically or idiomatically.

Please be more charitable. None of what I've said is misinformation.

It's disputed which is longest. There's a note about it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#cite_note-longest...

it quite probably was, before being depleted by so many developments

I was also surprised not to see the Niagara River on the list, which is the largest river near me and, when seen up close, clearly transports a staggering amount of water.

Reviewing the Wikipedia article about the Niagara [1], it appears that this is an oversight, because with an average discharge rate of 5,796 m3/s, it should be #49 on this list. I went to edit the page to fix that issue, but it looks like doing so requires manually updating the "No" (number) column, which I don't have time for right now.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_River

That would treat it as a tributary of the Saint Lawrence, but arguably it is the main stream.

I know it can't be compared to Nile, but Danube is significant for Europe.

Definitely!

The sverdrup [0] is a unit used in oceanography to measure the volumetric flow of ocean currents, although as a unit of flow it can describe rivers as well. The flow of the Amazon — a full order of magnitude above any other river — is only about 0.2 Sv.

About five million years ago, the Mediterranean basin was disconnected from the Atlantic and almost completely dessicated. During the Zanclean flood [1], the Atlantic reconnected with the basin and refilled it at a rate of ~100 Sv, carving the Strait of Gibraltar in the process.

Imagine a river about the width of the Amazon — perhaps wider, but not by too much — but with five hundred times the flow, filling the Mediterranean by up to ten meters a day. It must have been incredible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood

This oversimplifies a complex issue. What about seasonal variation? The Amazon varies in flow rate by a factor of 1-2, other rivers vary by a factor of 20, between the months of greatest and least flow. Yearly variation also exists:

https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/water/hydromet...

Well according to this the amazon is an order of magnitude more than the next highest so for that specific one it may not matter all that much.

yeah, but is the amazon as big as the next 6 combined (as the wiki suggests), or is it some smaller or larger multiple?

The St. Lawrence river is massive. The total watershed is larger than the Hudson , Connecticut, Merrimack and four largest rivers of Maine combined.

Unrelated, but the Robert-Bourossa dam spillway can discharge water at a rate similar to the capacity of the St. Lawrence as it flows near Quebec City.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/09/the-colossal-stepped-s...

It really is impressive. Knowing that made seeing that the Amazon has approx 13x the flow rate kinda blew my mind.

The scale of hydropower in QC is absolutely staggering. Even decades after the last major dam was finished, they still get >90% of their power from hydroelectric with very little other sources.

Fun fact, the dam reservoirs are so large that they actually caused a slight climate change effect causing harsher winters in nearby parts of the province.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project#Local_climat...

Crazy how the Amazon is 5x larger than the second largest.

It's also ~100 times bigger than the Nile, which is of comparable length.

The Nile has half the drainage area, but only 1% of the water flow. Really mind boggling how much difference the weather makes.

I wonder what the breakdown in sources for the disparity is. I can think of three potential differences, that are all likely contributors:

- Rainfall levels in the drainage area

- Evaporation over the course of the river

- Diversion for human use

I have to think the third is a substantial factor with the Nile vs the Amazon, considering that the Nile is essentially the only water source for two high-population countries (agriculture in Brazil is ostensibly supported by rainfall as well as by the river).

Also, in the top 7, is it and two of its tributaries. That's 3 of the top 7. Another one is in 14th.

I guess tributaries mean its double counting the same water, but still.

It is several km wide. What is remarkable is that it is very calm with a slow and steady current.

During wet season its widest point can reach 30 miles. This means that if you're on a boat in the middle of the river, you can't see nothing but water in any direction. To cross it on foot, over some imaginary bridge, would take you over 8 hours.

1/4 million cubic meters per second! It's insane!

The Hudson river in NY (which I'm close to) doesn't even rank, despite being 3+ miles wide at one point, and 175' deep. Just a piss stream.

Had to look up the Colorado river because it wasn't big enough to even make the list, it's 37th in US alone. Wow, so many people rely on such a small river.

So much of the Colorado’s water is taken, this is highly influenced by where they measure.

The reasonable place to measure is somewhere near the river's mouth.

What if all the water has been siphoned off by then? We could measure actual flow at the mouth, and theoretical "untouched" flow if no water was diverted or dammed

That would be tough for the Colorado; it’s my understanding that so much water gets taken out upstream that all that remains is a trickle in the Mexican desert that sometimes evaporates completely before reaching the sea.

I thought the same thing.

I live in Vegas.

Not very comforting.

I expected the Colorado to be in the top 50.

Shocked it's not even in the list!

Wow. The mighty Mississippi is only number 13.

Scary that the Colorado, which 40 million people rely on, doesn't even make the list.

Shows how water starved the American southwest really is.

Well, there's basically 0 outflow from the Colorado these days.

Because of the 40 million people.

Try to follow the Colorado River downstream of Lake Mead on Google Maps with satellite imagery turned on. It's quite interesting to see how much water is diverted away from it, primarily for irrigation.

>Other scholars[who?] claim that the name is derived from the Tupi word amassona, meaning "boat destroyer".

Regardless of which etymology is correct, I hadn't seen this explanation before and think it's wonderful, as long as I'm not in that boat.

For anyone who is interested in rivers in general, you owe it to yourself to take a look at Robert Szucs' wonderfully colorful maps of river basins around the world. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/maps-art-gis-geography...

I love how the page gives an actual value to the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool: 2,500 cubic meters!

That goes straight into long-term memory, for me. I hope ... my memory sometimes feels differently.

Something to be aware of. The length and the width are standardized, but the depth is not (it needs to be at least 2m deep) so it's not a very accurate number.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#S...

For me, that’s a derived value. An Olympic pool is 50m long, about half that wide (ten lanes; 8 for the swimmers plus one each near each edge for fairness (the waves would be very bad for swimmers swimming alongside the edge)) and about 2m deep.

Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#Spe..., it’s slightly over 50m long (to allow for the mounting of touch panels), exactly 25m wide and at least 2m deep, so 2500m³ is a lower limit, and there is no theoretical upper limit.

> and there is no theoretical upper limit.

I would like an infinitely deep pool, please!

That might not be enough as in the case of Gabriel's horn [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_horn

The always handy "Olympic pools", "Libraries of Congress" and "Football fields" (at least in Europe).

In the USA we use football fields too, but they're US Standard (aka American) football fields (120 yards).

It was sarcasm, no one uses anything like that outside of the US. Using football fields as a measure of distance is as "stupid american" meme around the world.

Most of the rest of the world assumes a soccer pitch when an American says a football field. They are basically the same length, so what exactly is your problem with using them as a marker for distance?

We Brits have our own markers, e.g. the area of Wales or the volume of a double decker bus. They don't translate that easily either.

Interestingly the area of a football pitch has a pretty huge degree of tolerance - between 45-90m wide and 90-120m long - and iirc while they can be nearly square, they aren't allowed to be exactly square (i.e. you can't have a 90x90m pitch, but 90x91m is ok ... if a little unusual).

At some point I believe the home team would adjust the width/length according to opponents' preferred tactics, but idk if that happens anymore.

There is no regulation football pitch in the world that is 45m wide. Where did you get this?

UEFA regulations are tightly controlled. The pitch must be 100-105m long and 64-68m wide.

FIFA have a wider tolerance (100-110m long) but that's probably because FIFA tournaments don't have home and away teams, whereas UEFA do.

There probably aren't many regulation football pitches that narrow ... but it is absolutely permitted. You can get this information plenty of places but since you raised FIFA, it's in their PDF containing the Laws Of The Game (determined by IFAB) https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/1cf301829f1cf996/original/ifab... - see pages 36 and page 37

Note that they do impose some additional restrictions for internationals. And yes UEFA also have restrictions on the dimensions of the pitches that can be used for their competitions (Europa League, Champions League, Conference League) much like they have restrictions on stadia at various levels in those competitions. But according to the laws of the game, those are the dimensions. It wasn't always this way - Rangers narrowed their pitch by "a couple of yards" to mess with Dynamo Kiev in the European Cup back in the late 80s (it worked, they beat them and advanced).

We both know that a 45x120m pitch would look certainly look weird, but if we are talking about what is allowed in football the standard are the IFAB laws, not what UEFA stipulate for their elite competitions. If you're watching the English Premiership then you won't see such pitches - these clubs will believe they can compete in such competitions and will want to do host home games at their own stadia. If you're watching or playing in 2nd tier or lower (a number of clubs and pitches vastly outnumbering those at the very top) in any country you very well might encounter them.

Good point about IFAB, I have only been referring to orgs like UEFA and the FA.

In England all organised football, even amateur, is regulated by the FA, so we can say there is no regulation pitch here in England that is less than 60m wide

But you're right, elsewhere it could be all sorts. Pitches can be hemmed in by rocks, trees, water, dwellings, whatever so people will just play on what they have.

I believe the FA actually use the looser dimensions (meaning 45 metre width is ok), but you're right few clubs at the upper end of the pyramid will really push the boundaries so to speak. Might make for some fun cup encounters though :)

> if we are talking about what is allowed in football the standard are the IFAB laws, not what UEFA stipulate for their elite competitions.

To be pedantic though, EUFA defines grassroots football as anything that is non-professional and non-elite, and since 2017 IFAB says that national FAs are free to make their own rules on pitch dimensions for grassroots football. So there is no contradiction - IFAB, EUFA and your FA are all in agreement :)

Who is my FA?

How would I know? But it doesn't matter: If your local youth club decides to host an officially sanctioned international tournament, they might go ask IFAB about what size to make the pitches. IFAB is going to tell them that if they meet the national FA guidelines, then they meet the IFAB guidelines. (Look at page 25 of the IFAB law book)

Usually only few pitches needs to have UEFA/FIFA standard.

Handegg pitches have a fixed size of 109.75x48.8. Football pitches vary in size a lot so it doesn't make sense to use them as a reference size.

UEFA regulations say a pitch has to be 100-105m long, the FA and FIFA say similar. I wouldn't call that a lot of variance.

If someone wants to communicate precision, they should probably use SI units instead of sports pitches. If not, football field will do just fine.

> football field will do just fine

One just needs to check the size of random field first.

In Italy we definitely often use "campo da calcio" as a quick measurement unit for areas. I'm guessing that's due to the fact that for most people using squared meters is really limited to measuring housing areas and other few use cases, so reverting to something that everybody knows well (a football field) is much more effective. For distances, everybody is very comfortable using all powers of 10 of the meter for all kind of purposes so there's no need to use references to real world measurements.

If someone in the U.S. told me something was 'n' football fields long I would assume they mean 100 yards excluding the endzones.

I bet half the time someone gives the length of something in football fields they make that same "error"

Also didn't football fields change size when the goal posts were moved? It's not even a stable measurement!

Meanwhile americans bitch and moan about meters but are perfectly fine using yards. The navy even used to use kiloyards as a unit of measure for naval gun range!

Orinoco flow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw :)

If i create a canal from a ocean into a basin.. does that count as river?

https://en-ph.topographic-map.com/map-hjk1tp/Sahara/?center=...

Technically, I think that would be a breachway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breachway

Though in the short term your making a flood, longer term flow rates should depend on the tides.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

For a good chunk of my life I lived on a shore of #10 of the list - Yenisei river [0] and had pleasure traveling down its length on a boat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenisey

Couldn't this be automatically generated from wikidata instead of keeping a manual list?

Wolfram Alpha says that the Hay River is way way bigger than the Amazon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_River_(Canada)

Oh my, that dataset is badly poisoned https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=hay+river+average+disch... gives 3.63 billion m3/s. If I'm not mistaken that's would be one Lake Huron (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=lake+huron+volume) each second

According to Wikipedia it's 3.63 billion m³ per year, i.e. 115 m³/s.

And this is why you standardize all your dashboards and alerts to ops/s :-)

> During the dry season its main channel averages 2 to 6 miles (3.2 to 9.6 km) in width, but in the wet season can reach an astonishing 30 miles (48.3 km) wide. To put that figure into perspective, if you could walk across the river it would take you about 8 hours to get from one side to the other! Its mouth is even wider, at an incredulous 235 miles (380 km)

https://www.rainforestcruises.com/guides/amazon-river-facts

Very cool. Now looking out into the distance imagining 100 olympic size swimming pools stacked end to end, being re-filled every second (flow of amazon), crazy.

In due course, the Casiquiare will likely capture the upper Orinoco, diverting all its flow into the Amazon via the Rio Negro - though the lower Orinoco will remain a major river in its own right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casiquiare_canal

Little known fact, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra converge into the same river delta... Bengal

The Congo river is a magical thing - it's alive, it has personality, it has presence.

Here's me crossing it a few hundred kms from the mouth.

https://youtu.be/OV8V3GdOcPU?t=507

Gotta love Australia. No rivers make the cut.

Our longest & largest drainage basin river, the Murray, doesn't remotely come close to making this list.

It'd need to have about 3x its flow rate to come 150th.

It is to be expected. No intersecting tectonic plates with landmass = no mountains = no rivers.

The biggest rivers come from mountain ranges that sit on huge inter-continental plates. large Indian and Chinese rivers come from the Himalayas on the Indian plate. The south American rivers from the Andes and the South American plate; and the Congo from the tall-great-lakes that sit on the African plate.

Geologically, New Guinea is part of Australia (the continent), being part of a contiguous section of continental crust. New Zealand, however, is not, forming instead its own "microcontinent" (sometimes Zealandia). A couple of rivers in NG do in fact make the list. But Australians don't generally realize they sit on the same ground as Papuans.

> But Australians don't generally realize they sit on the same ground as Papuans.

What? Of course we do.

We're the colonial power even, you think we haven't noticed them?

I’m a bit surprised to find the Nile at row 105. I thought it would be on the top 10.

EDIT: I see @rendall had the exact same thought an hour before me. :)

Is there any ecological concern re: water flow rate in rivers reducing over time? Akin to deforestation, extinction, etc.?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com