I Tried Searching For the Squiggliest River On Earth - It Broke Me

I tried to answer a surprisingly difficult question: what’s the squiggliest river on Earth? At first glance, it seems simple — just find the curviest one, right? Well good luck with that!

First, I explored global river data using the HydroRIVERS database — a dataset based on elevation and water flow models — and filtered it using discharge values to focus on the most significant rivers. Then I explored OpenStreetMap, as well as another dataset that included named rivers with coordinate data, so I could analyze real river geometries more directly.

To measure squiggliness, I tested two main approaches:

Sinuosity — the ratio between a river's actual length and the straight-line distance between its start and end point.

Average turning angle per unit of distance — capturing how often and sharply a river changes direction.

I processed hundreds of rivers, visualized them in tools like Google Earth, and tried to make sense of the patterns. But let’s just say... things didn’t go quite as expected.

00:00 – Introduction
00:15 – HydroRIVERS
01:50 – OpenStreetMap
02:35 – Unesco Dataset
02:50 – Sinuosity
03:50 – Average turning angle
04:20 – The problems...

HydroRIVERS:
https://www.hydrosheds.org/products/hydrorivers

UNESCO Dataset:
https://ihp-wins.unesco.org/dataset/world-rivers

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Видео I Tried Searching For the Squiggliest River On Earth - It Broke Me канала Geo Data Guy