Flash flood

From Glossary of Meteorology



flash flood

Flooding caused by rapidly rising water level in streams, creeks, rivers, or other waterways, normally dry stream beds, or in urban areas, usually as a result of intense rainfall over a relatively small area or for moderate to intense rainfall over highly saturated or impervious land surfaces, and generally occurring within minutes to several hours of the rainfall event.

Steep terrain tends to concentrate runoff into streams very quickly and is often a contributing factor. Changes in soil properties (e.g., burn areas from wildfires), hydrophobic or impervious soils, removal of surface vegetation, and excess runoff from warm rainfall on significant snowpack can also be important contributors. Additional causes of flash floods include ice jams and levee and dam failures.

Term updated 24 April 2017.


Retrieved from "https://glossarystaging.ametsoc.net/w/index.php?title=Flash_flood&oldid=17845"
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by WikiTeq
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki
Copyright 2024 American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this work, please contact permissions@ametsoc.org. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S.Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, require written permission or a license from AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement.