Recently I interested why Niagara waterfall broke my photo in iPhone and what was the reason of the strong noise in the video. I had two guesses: the trivial one (sunlight and reflections) and static electricity from the falling/flying droplets.
The first guess is trivial and not very interesting. As for the static electricity… I’ve found something relevant that made me closer to truth 🙂
http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Breaking-drop_theory
“The fact that exceptionally large amount of anions (negative ions) are found under waterfalls and in the seaside are contributed by the German physicist Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard (Lénárd Fülöp in Hungarian, June 7, 1862 – May 20, 1947) who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties.
Lenard Effect: The separation of electric charges accompanying the aerodynamic breakup of water drops, first studied systematically by the German physicist P. Lenard. Experiments have shown that the degree of charge separation in spray processes depends upon the drop temperature, presence of dissolved impurities, speed of the impinging air blast, and contact with foreign surfaces. The largest fragments of the broken drops are observed to carry positive charges (or cations) and the fine spray of drops carried off in the impinging air current carries net negative charges (anions).”
Being in America 