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United States United States Waterfall UNESCO World Heritage

Tower Fall

A 40 m drop.

When to go

Base of Tower Fall with rainbow
Daniel Mayer · CC BY-SA 3.0

In numbers.

40m

Height

0.96m³/s

Average flow

estimate

May–Jun

Best months

376kW

Water power

estimate

The water at Tower Fall, month by month

It roars from April to May.

The fullest months: from April to May, with the snowmelt. The thinnest: from August to October and from December to February. Below −4 °C on average (from December to March): the falls can partly freeze.

  1. 0.3 m³/sJan
  2. 0.3 m³/sFeb
  3. 1.2 m³/sMar
  4. 2.9 m³/sApr
  5. 3.1 m³/sMay
  6. 2.2 m³/sJun
  7. 1.1 m³/sJul
  8. 0.5 m³/sAug
  9. 0.4 m³/sSep
  10. 0.5 m³/sOct
  11. 0.8 m³/sNov
  12. 0.7 m³/sDec
high water best months to go may freeze

From about 0.27 m³/s in the lowest month to 3.1 m³/s in the highest. Best months to go, with plenty of water and pleasant days: from May to June.

Estimate: the timing comes from rain, snowmelt and evaporation (NASA POWER, 1991–2020); the amounts from the river model of HydroATLAS (WaterGAP, 1971–2000). Dams upstream can change the real flow.

Waterfall

Tower Fall is a waterfall in United States. The water falls 40 m. It lies within Yellowstone National Park. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Read more on Wikipedia

Getting there.

Plan your visit

Stay, explore and get there

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.

How big is it?

How big it really is.

40 mTower Fall1.8 ma person9.0 ma house56 mTower of Pisa

Height of the drop from Wikidata. Buildings and the person are drawn at the same scale.

376 kW

About 0.96 m³/s falling 40 m: the power of the water as it drops.

  • enough to power about 94 homes, if it were all turned into electricity

Power of falling water = density × gravity × flow × height. Average flow and height as shown above; an estimate.

Seen from the sky.

8 × 8 km of cloud-free satellite image, with what OpenStreetMap knows around the falls.

Tower Fall seen from above (Sentinel-2) N 2 km

Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 (EOX, CC BY 4.0), 8 × 8 km, north up. Points © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The Tower Creek through the falls
1,900 m1,950 m2,000 mTower Fall-1.5 km-1 km-0.5 km0← upstreamdownstream →

The line follows the river as mapped in OpenStreetMap; heights from the 30 m Copernicus model, which smooths narrow drops — the published height of the falls is the one above.

Around the falls the river drops 133 m in 2.2 km.

What is around.

  • 3viewpointsTower Fall Overlook, Calcite Springs
  • —waymarked walking routes
  • 14car parks
  • —swimming spots
  • —picnic sites
  • 3toilets
  • 3information boards and visitor centres
  • —bus stops within 1 km
  • 1other named waterfalls within 4 kmLost Creek Falls
  • —caves
  • 3campsitesAgate Creek, Tower Fall, Slough Creek Campground
  • 2hotels, B&Bs and huts within 6 kmRoosevelt Lodge, The Roosevelt Lodge Cabins
  • —restaurants and cafés within 3 km

Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit, up to 2 km around the falls (unless noted). A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet. © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

Weather

The weather, month by month.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Afternoon °C-4-316131925241991-4
Night °C-14-14-9-5161094-2-9-14
Rain & snow (mm)616366788574414048646468
Wet days171617181816131110131518
Sun h/day4.76.46.87.17.810.011.810.38.45.84.43.7
Snow on the ground (cm)52646032123004131932

Long-term averages 1991–2020 (NASA POWER) for a cell about 55 km wide, with temperatures carried to the height of the falls (1,933 m) at −6.5 °C per 1,000 m. Not a forecast.

Photos

Through visitors' eyes.

Frozen Tower Fall (32120137682)
Yellowstone National Park · Public domain
Frozen Tower Fall (52653078889)
YellowstoneNPS · Public domain
Grand Canyon of Yellowstone 7
Rik007 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Recent years

Wet years and dry years

Rain of each month as a share of the 1991–2020 average. A wet season above 100 % usually means a fuller waterfall.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2020100%108%113%66%107%139%86%77%62%122%84%45%
202167%110%54%45%96%14%81%179%39%82%58%107%
202255%30%36%95%152%133%53%106%88%85%105%98%
202359%81%120%63%60%193%78%234%128%120%47%49%
202450%101%116%75%112%60%68%105%116%41%63%69%
202570%133%82%83%77%67%77%108%84%128%43%196%

130% wetter than usual 70% drier than usual

Compare with the waterfalls nearby.

Tower Fall

United States

  • 40 mHeight
  • 0.96 m³/sAverage flow
  • May–JunBest months

Yellowstone Falls

United States

  • 33 mHeight
  • 0.23 m³/sAverage flow
  • May–JunBest months

See the guide

Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River

United States

  • 33 mHeight
  • 25 m³/sAverage flow
  • May–JunBest months

See the guide

Virginia Cascades

United States

  • 18 mHeight
  • 0.57 m³/sAverage flow
  • May–JunBest months

See the guide

About these numbers

Names, height, width, riverWikidata (Q377832) · CC0
River flow and catchmentHydroATLAS / RiverATLAS v1.0 (Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0
ClimateNASA POWER, 1991–2020
Relief, river profile, 3D modelCopernicus DEM GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA
Paths, viewpoints, parking© OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL
ImagesEOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons

Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.

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.