With Niagara falls going as hard as it has for as long as it has, where does all of that water come from?
Edit: My first gold! Thank you kind stranger. Also, thank you for all of the kind and informative responses to such a silly question. Definitely helped a lot!
In: Geology
A waterfall is just a vertical gap in a river. A higher part of the river runs into cliff and the falls off, then starts flowing again. So to simplify your question it might be “why do rivers keep flowing and not dry up?”.
A river flows from a high elevation area to a lower area. The water at the higher level comes from rain from humidity in the atmosphere caused by evaporation over the oceans. In a place with consistent rainfall the river will never dry up as the lakes above it keep getting filled. Places with more rain tend to have larger rivers that move more water.
In some parts of the world there are definite rainy and dry seasons, so some waterfalls will be gushing during one part of the year and a tiny trickle at another part of the year, depending on how much rain has been falling upstream.
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