Can anyone give me some links to information on whitewater whirlpools? I have been searching for some but i can not find any. Or/and If anyone could give me a link on river currents in general that would be great too.
Thanks
-Jake

Hello Jake,

Whirlpools are interesting features that form on eddy lines; the interface between a strong current and a relatively stationary section of water. There is a lot of friction between the moving and nonmoving water that causes chaotic movement but also spinning movement of the water. I don't know what factors really make the difference, but sometimes enough water starts spinning to form a whirlpool. These whirlpools will not be stable for very long. They form high on the eddy line as a chaotic circling. The current pushes them downstream along the eddy line and if conditions are right the circling will congeal and deepen into a whirlpool for some distance. The pattern continues moving downstream along the eddy line till it dissipates and dissapears. In the meantime new whirlpools continually form at the top of the eddy line and also move downstream. Usually you will see several whirlpools in the different stages moving along the eddy line, one after another.

Whirlpools are fun to look for and you can find them all over the place in tiny streams to huge ocean tidal currents. The bigger the volume of water the bigger the whirlpools.

There is a search button on the upper right corner of every AW page that leads to a search page. You can try various search methods, but the google search at the top of the page works pretty well. You can search just the AW website or the whole web. Search for whirlpool on AW and you will find all kinds of river pages with descriptions of whirlpools and maybe some photos showing them. You may learn a lot just reading about various real whirlpools. If you find some with particularly good descriptions or photos, post the links back here for others.

In a very brief search of the whole web, I did not find any pages with great explanations of whirlpools though quite a few about whirlpools.

The book, Kayak, by William Neally has some great drawings and explanations of river currents in general. It is a great book for lots of reasons and is worth getting. Other folks will have their favorite books on this subject.

On the web, you will have to try a variety of search terms, currents, river hydraulogy, hydraulics, whitewater currents, etc. Search through the chaff and see if there are any good pages with diagrams and explanations. Have to admit that I have not found a whole lot that was of interest.

The Book Kayak has some very interesting whirlpool discussions