Meanders Are Everywhere

Meandering is not unique to muddy lowland rivers — it is a fundamental tendency of flowing fluids. Channels of meltwater carving across the surface of a glacier wind back and forth in the same looping pattern, and the Gulf Stream, a current of warm water flowing through colder ocean, develops its own large-scale bends as it crosses the Atlantic.

What makes these examples revealing is that neither glacial meltwater nor an ocean current carries the sediment load of a normal river. Yet they curve anyway, with the same proportions seen in rivers. That tells us meandering is driven primarily by the dynamics of the flow itself, not by the banks or the sediment a river happens to be moving. Curving is what moving water does.