Geography Spotlight: Where the Rivers Meet

This week, a screensaver of the confluence of the Rhone and Arve Rivers led me to look up a bunch of images and videos about it, particularly videos. My granddaughter and I like to send each other screensavers with amazing scenery but some months ago, I was going to send her one with the Rainbow Mountain in Peru. I came across this article: Why Not to Trek to Rainbow Mountain in Peru, which says it’s not as colorful as the brochures would lead you to believe and I sent her that. A little while later, we both agreed we were sorry we even saw it because it’s made us suspicious of breathtaking shades of blue and green and what-have you. Now my knee-jerk reaction is “that can’t be real.” So I try to find videos. It turns out that the Rhone-Arve Junction is listed as the No. 1 Confluence on more than one Top 10 video and it does look like the screensaver I saw.

Here are the Top 10 Amazing Confluences in this video, with a Jeopardy! clue if I could find one:

10. The Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers: This Jeopardy! clue will tell you what the location is called where these rivers meet to form the Ohio River but the players had to know the city and the first to buzz in did.
RIGHT HERE IN RIVER CITY ($200) The area between this city’s Allegheny & Monongahela Rivers is called the Golden Triangle

9. The Thompson and Fraser Rivers, British Columbia, Canada: This occurs near the town of Lytton, aka “the Rafting Capital of Canada” (about 3 hours from Vancouver). Here’s a clue on the Fraser River:
MOUNTAINS $500: This range extends from Lassen Peak in California to the Fraser River in British Columbia
The Thompson River has no clues and most of the Lytton clues are about the “dark and stormy night” novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Nothing on how this Canadian town was named after him.

8. Alaknanda and Bhagirathi Rivers: Devaprayag, India is the town in the State of Uttarakhand in northern India where these two rivers converge to form the Ganga (Ganges). Surprisingly, there has only been one clue on this, way back in 1991
INDIA ($200): The Bhagirathi & Alaknanda rivers join to form this sacred river
Here is an interesting article about why the two rivers switch colors in different seasons

7. Uruguay River and tributary: This is a Getty image and there’s no info on the name of the tributary, where it is in Argentina exactly, or why the Uruguay looks so yellow. Most Jeopardy! clues on the Uruguay River have something to do with the Rio de la Plata, but remember this triple stumper from 2014?
OFFICIAL NATIONAL NAMES ($1000) The “Oriental Republic of” this small South American country borders Brazil
According to this article, the reason it’s called that is because the land lies east of the Uruguay River and it is still the country’s official name.

6. Mosel and Rhine Rivers:, It happens in Koblenz, Germany, a city in the Rhineland-Palatinate state in southwestern Germany. Brittanica says its Roman name was Confluentes. Jeopardy! has tons of clues on the Rhine and a few on the Mosel, or Moselle as it is sometimes spelled. Here’s one from 1997:
GERMAN RIVERS ($1000) The Moselle River forms part of the border between Germany & this grand duchy
The only clues on Koblenz have to do with Lorelei.

5. Jialing and Yangtze Rivers:. We’ll have to go to a huge city named Chongqing in southwest China to see this. Wikipedia says Chongqing “is the largest city on Earth by city area,” and there are a slew of articles telling you it’s the largest city you never heard of. In this one, a man commented that it’s not the largest city in the world although the author never claimed it was. (Until today at least, the author was right about me). There are plenty of clues on the Yangtze. Here’s the only one that mentions the Jialing River (from 1991):
IN CHINA ($800) Its principal tributaries include the Jialing, the Min & the Yalong

4. The Danube, Inn and Ilz Rivers. These 3 rivers converge in Passau, Germany. Because of that, the city is also called “Dreiflüssestadt” (City of Three Rivers). The Inn originates in Switzerland, then flows along much of Austria’s border with Germany until it makes it way to Passau. The Ilz is entirely in Bavaria. The only clue I could find on the Inn River had to do with Innsbruck, Austria and I couldn’t find any on the Ilz. Wikipedia lists 30 tributaries for the Danube in the order they enter it. The Inn and Ilz are No. 7 and 8.

3. Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes: These 2 rivers meet and flow side by side for over 3 miles before they become the Amazon River in Manaus, Brazil. I found one Jeopardy! clue on this amazing phenomenon, which is called The Meeting of the Waters:
MUDDY WATERS ($200) In Brazil, the sandy water of the Solimoes River flows side-by-side with the Rio Negro until they merge into this huge river

2. The Green and Colorado Rivers: The Green River joins the Colorado above Cataract Canyon inside Canyonlands National Park near the town of Moab in Utah. Here’s the last clue Jeopardy! had about that.
U.S. RIVERS $1200: Called Utah’s major stream, the Green River drains the northeast quarter of the state & flows into this longer one
This site says that the Green River does appear “slightly” green in contrast to the red-brown hue of the Colorado’s waters. Hmmm. In that video, it looks plenty green.

1. The Rhone and the Arve: The source of the Arve River is actually in France and it isn’t in Switzerland for that long a stretch before it empties into the Rhone in Geneva. Conversely, the Rhone starts in Switzerland and travels a far longer time in France before its waters eventually wind up in the Mediterranean. Jeopardy! has only had one clue with the Arve in it. (This means they don’t expect you to know it).
“R”IVERS $800: Have a glass of Cotes du this river, which the Arve River joins after flowing down from Mont Blanc

Of all these confluences, the one I’d like to see most in person is No. 3 on this list– the Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes flowing side by side for 3 miles. The colors of the Thompson and Fraser rivers (#9) don’t look that different to me than the Arve and the Rhone (#1), and I think I would hate expecting the Green River to be as green as that picture and then it wasn’t.