Nahal Paran () is a seasonal stream in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

Sinai Peninsula The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai ( ; ; ; ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Asia and Afri ...

and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

Negev Desert The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...

. With a length of 150 kilometers, it is the third largest

watercourse A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

after the

Jordan River The Jordan River or River Jordan (, ''Nahr al-ʾUrdunn''; , ''Nəhar hayYardēn''), also known as ''Nahr Al-Sharieat'' (), is a endorheic river in the Levant that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and drains to the Dead ...

and Yarmouk River. It is also the widest watercourse in Israel.

Hydrology

The origin of the river is in the Paran Desert of the Sinai Peninsula, and it flows into the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime enviro ...

of Nahal HaArava. Water flow exists only during flash floods. This is the

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

's largest river, with an area of thousands of square kilometers, creating broad planes that separate the Negev's high north and the Eilat mountains of the south. In the past, during floods, like other major rivers in the Negev, Nahal paran would flood the Arava Road (the main road to

Eilat Eilat ( , ; ; ) is Israel's southernmost city, with a population of , a busy port of Eilat, port and popular resort at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on what is known in Israel as the Gulf of Eilat and in Jordan as the Gulf of Aqaba. The c ...

), until the construction of a bridge over the river. The stream had the highest recorded flow in Israel of 1,150 cubic meters per second on 6 November 1970. In 2014, the record was broken by a flow of 1,280 cubic meters per second measured at Zin. For comparison, the average flow in the

is 16 cubic meters per second. Ground water near the riverbed provides drinking water for communities in the Arava desert. This water has high salinity and undergoes

desalination Desalination is a process that removes mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination is the removal of salts and minerals from a substance. One example is Soil salinity control, soil desalination. This is important for agric ...

References

{{coord, 30.3333, N, 34.9686, E, source:wikidata, display=title Rivers of Israel Rivers of Egypt