A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1133 entries
flash flood
A sudden, violent flood caused by intense rainfall in a watershed, arriving with little or no warning — the water rising from ankle-deep to chest-deep in minutes. Flash floods are the deadliest weather-related hazard in the Desert Southwest, where impermeable rock, sparse vegetation, and narrow canyons concentrate runoff into walls of water, mud, and debris. A flash flood can be triggered by rain falling miles away, in a storm you cannot see, in a canyon where the sky is clear overhead.
Etymology
“Flash” from Middle English “flasshen” (to splash, sprinkle), later extended to sudden bursts of light or action. “Flood” from Old English “flod,” from Proto-Germanic “*flodus,” related to “flow.” The compound “flash flood” is 20th-century American English, describing floods as sudden as a flash of light.