Wadi
Wadi Hanifa
92 km from source to mouth · Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia
In numbers
Length
92km
Basin
2,186km²
Drop
226m
from 804 m to 578 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
92 km of river and 4 stops on the way: 4 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 804 m
- 29 kmAl ‘Uyaynah8,649 people
- 36 kmAl Jubaylah8,005 people
- 58 kmAd Dir‘īyah61,609 people
- 73 km‘Irqah42,179 people
- 92 kmMouthat 578 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
Wadi in Najd, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
It drops from 804 m to 578 m, 2.5 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 2,186 km², about the size of KM. 571,000 people live in it. Highest water: April; lowest: from July to October. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- Ad Dir‘īyahLargest city on its banks · 61,609 people
- King Khalid International Airport (RUH)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 28 km from the cityCar hire at RUH airport (Riyadh)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From February to April and from November to DecemberThe best months to visit
Wadi Hanifa, month by month
Highest water: April
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: from February to April and from November to December.
An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Wadi Hanifa: the basin in numbers
2,186 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 571,000people live in the basin
- 261/km²people per km²
- 772maverage altitude of the basin
- 131mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 24.3°Caverage air temperature
What covers the basin
- 8% Cropland
- 27% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Wadi Hanifa: what you find on the way
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.4 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Wadi Hanifa in pictures




Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q3595382) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.