"I noticed the river was very full, so I waited for around thirty minutes to see the spectacle unfold. I did not expect it to grow so fast into the raging torrent it became” - says the guy who has caught this marvelous moment on camera. He captured an interesting natural phenomenon: the Mahlongwa River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa breaching its bank and cutting a channel to the Indian Ocean. As the video above begins, you can see water from the river just starting to trickle down the sand into the sea. Sand being sandy, the process happens pretty quickly. The trickle becomes a rushing torrent in a matter of just minutes. Because of the heavy rainfall, the water in the river surged up and it caused to overflow in the ocean.
What seemingly starts as a calm and quiet spill, it soon becomes a roaring mass of water, louder than the ocean. This totally natural breach starts slowly and it pushes through the sand. As the river flows steadily, we can see that it makes a deeper and deeper channel to make its way to the ocean. The good thing is that this huge amount of water will overflow into the ocean, not causing damage in the local area. As the channel becomes wider and wider, more water is going through, securing its way to the ocean. As it gathers momentum, rolling down the sand, the speed increases and the amount of water is huge. At one moment, it is so strong that it can sweep off everything along the way. As the river, carrying out sand, pours into the ocean, it can be clearly seen the change of color it cause. The river blends with the huge expanse of ocean water and it can’t be stopped. The river and the ocean become one and the view is very powerful. The sky, the ocean and the river, merge in one enormous vastness that is hard to imagine.
Rainfall over an extended period and an extended area can cause major rivers to overflow their banks. The water can cover enormous areas. Downstream areas may be affected, even when they didn’t receive much rain themselves. The rain water enters the river in many ways. Some rain will fall into the river directly, but that alone doesn’t make the river rise high. A lot of rain water will run off the surface when the soil is saturated or hard. It will flow to small rivers that flow to larger rivers and these rivers flow into even larger rivers. In this way all the rain that fell in a large area (catchment area) comes together in this one very large river. When there is a lot of
rain over a long period, you see the river rise gradually as it is fed with water form smaller rivers. It takes time for all the rainwater to reach the river, but once it is in the river it has to flow downstream to sea. The water spreads out as much as possible flowing to the lower lying areas before slowly rising. A breach is very dangerous for the people living close to it. The strength of the water may carry cars, trees and even houses away.
