The lower Yellow River has changed course radically throughout its geologic history. The river’s decreased gradient and velocity on the plain cause its suspended load of silt to settle. As the riverbed builds up, the stream shifts course to occupy a lower level. In the past four millennia the river has entered the Yellow Sea at points as much as 500 miles (800 km) apart. From the 3rd millennium bce to 602 bce, when it occupied its northernmost course, it flowed near the present-day city of Tianjin and entered the nearby Bo Hai. From 602 bce to 70 ce both the river and its mouth shifted to a point on the Yellow Sea south of the Shandong Peninsula. From 70 to 1048 the Yellow River again shifted to the north, taking up a course near its present bed.

From 1048 to 1194 changes in the course of the river occurred farther inland, where the river enters the North China Plain. In 1194 the river occupied a course running to the southern edge of the delta. In that year, after protecting dikes had been ruptured, a second arm of the Yellow River began flowing south of the Shandong Peninsula. From 1289 to 1324 the river took over the bed of the Guo River and a large part of the Huai River, entering the Yellow Sea well to the south of Shandong. It was stable for more than 500 years, until the 1850s, when it again shifted to the north of the Shandong Peninsula, finally settling into its present course.

As the Chinese developed agriculture on the plain, they became more adept at building levees to stabilize the channel and thereby protect the inhabitants against the floods brought by shifts in the channel. Tens of thousands of miles of levees have been constructed through the centuries. The overall effect of those structures has been to delay flooding, but, because the riverbed has been elevated and confined artificially, levee breaching and channel shifts have become more dramatic and destructive than they otherwise would have been. The few hydraulic engineers who succeeded in decreasing rather than increasing the flood hazard have gained legendary status in Chinese history.

Breaks in the levees have been more frequent than course changes throughout history. Such events have triggered cataclysmic floods, notably during the 18th and 20th centuries. Between 960 and 1048 there were 38 major breaks, and 29 more were recorded from 1048 to 1194. In later years such breaches were less frequent as a result of systematic improvements to the levee system. The slackening of those efforts during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) led to the major change in the course of the river that occurred from 1852 to 1854. In 1887 the Yellow River burst the levees near Kaifeng and began to flow into the Huai River, but engineering efforts succeeded in returning it to its former course in 1889. The flood of 1887 covered thousands of square miles, completely burying many villages under silt. In 1889 another flood destroyed 1,500 villages. The next major flood, in 1921, wiped out hundreds of populated places, mainly near the river’s mouth. In the flood of 1933 more than 3,000 populated places were submerged and 18,000 people killed. Other floods occurred in 1938—when the levees were purposely broken near Zhengzhou to delay the advance of Japanese troops—and in 1949.

The Yellow River carries an average annual volume of about 13.4 cubic miles (56 cubic km) of water down to the sea, a rate of about 62,500 cubic feet (1,770 cubic metres) per second. The rate can be as much as 78,000 cubic feet (2,200 cubic metres) per second in high-volume years and as little as 22,000–28,000 cubic feet (600–800 cubic metres) per second in low-volume years. There also is considerable seasonal variation in its volume. The river has a low discharge rate—eight other Chinese rivers exceed that of the Yellow River—because its basin encompasses large areas of arid or semiarid land, where considerable quantities of water evaporate or are diverted for irrigation. More than half of the basin’s annual precipitation falls during the rainy season (July to October). The average annual precipitation for the entire basin is about 18.5 inches (470 mm), but its distribution is highly uneven. In some years the bulk of the river’s volume comes from its tributaries. In the upstream areas the main source is snowfall in the mountains, with the high-water level occurring in the spring. The highest water levels in the middle and lower parts of the river occur in July and August. Seasonal maximum flows can be considerable: 188,900 to 216,200 cubic feet (5,350 to 6,120 cubic metres) per second near Lanzhou, 350,000 cubic feet (10,000 cubic metres) near Longmen, and 1,270,000 cubic feet (36,000 cubic metres; recorded in 1943) in the lower parts of the river.

Britannica Quiz

Water and its Varying Forms

The Yellow River carries along the highest concentration of sediment load of any river in the world, amounting to about 57 pounds of silt per cubic yard (34 kg per cubic metre) of water, as compared with 2 pounds (1 kg) for the Nile River, 9 pounds (5 kg) for the Amu Darya (the ancient Oxus River), and 22 pounds (13 kg) for the Colorado River. Floodwaters may contain up to 1,200 pounds of silt per cubic yard (710 kg per cubic metre) of water (70 percent by volume). The river, unimpeded, carried down to the sea about 1.52 billion tons of silt per year, a large part of it loess, which was loose and easily washed away. Other factors contributing to the high volume of silt included the steepness of the slopes, the rapidity of the current, and a lack of forested areas to check erosion. The reservoirs created by dams have allowed increasing quantities of silt to settle out.

The Yellow River freezes over in parts of its middle section for several months each winter. On the North China Plain near Kaifeng there are 15 to 20 icebound days per year, but farther downstream there are none at all. Ice jams are broken up with the help of aerial bombardment or sometimes by artillery shelling.