High Water vs Low Water – Seasons of Victoria Falls 2026

by Robin Waters

As a young boy, I can remember snatches of a road trip taken with my parents from Harare (then Salisbury) to Victoria Falls to see the near-record floods of the Zambezi. A most vivid memory is reaching Kandahar Island on a cruise – we could not disembark because the island was under water, with monkeys stranded in the trees stealing food from the boat.
That would have been the flood of the 1968-69 season. The record stands from 1958 when 10,000 cubic meters per second of water crashed over the Falls. Every year, the volume of water in the river varies with the time of year, and varies from year to year depending on the rainfall of the recent wet season.
In summary, high water is typically from March to May, and low water is November – in low water most years the eastern side of the falls seen from Zambia will be dry, revealing dramatic black basalt craggy cliffs, while the waterfall will be flowing at Devil’s Cataract and the Main Falls. Disadvantages of high water are thick clouds of spray which can make photography a challenge, and getting soaked by the constant rain falling on the viewpoints. Disadvantages of low water is that the widest curtain of falling water in the world will be restricted to only part of its potential width.
South central Africa’s ecosystem is defined by rains which fall from November to April (if at all!). There is a time lag from when the rain falls in the central Angolan highlands and the 25 km wide Barotse floodplain in western Zambia, to when it drains through the Zambezi catchment to Victoria Falls. On rough average, high water flow is 3,000 m3/sec, and low water is 300 m3/sec.
This year, 2026, the flow peaked in March at +4,000 m3/sec, and is just over 1,000 m3/sec at time of writing in late July – whatever the volume, rest assured that the spectacle and beauty – and the tangible spiritual energy of the Falls is undiminished.