If you’ve ever seen Niagara Falls, you know the tremendous amount of water that tumbles over the edge of the falls each second. Could you believe there’s a waterfall with a flow more than twice as great as Niagara?
This waterfall, known as Guaira, is on the Parana River, on the border between Paraguay and Brazil. In Brazil, the waterfall is known as Sete Quedas. Guaira is just ,ver three miles wide, and only about 110 feet high. But Guaira has the largest .iverage flow of any single waterfall on earth.
On the average, about 212,000 cubic feet of water passes over Niagara Falls each second. The average flow of Guaira is 470,000 cubic feet per second. And during seasons when the Parana River is high, the flow over Guaira can reach 1.7 million cubic feet per second!
The falls had a total drop of about 375 feet (114 metres). They were formed when the Paraná River, after crossing the red sandstone Maracaju (Mbaracayú) Mountains, was forced through canyon walls and narrowed abruptly from a width of 1,250 feet (381 metres) to 200 feet (61 metres).
The churning water created a deafening noise that could be heard for a distance of 20 miles (32 km). A constant rainbow hovered over the site. The falls probably represented the greatest volume of falling water in the world, and they were a tourist attraction for many years.
The Itaipu hydroelectric plant nearby, which was completed in 1982 and in 2004 increased in capacity to 14,000 megawatts, totally submerged the falls. The reservoir thus created covered an area of 521 square miles (1,350 square km). The Itaipu complex of dams and spillway curves almost 5 miles (8 km) across the Paraná River and is one of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants.
