What are floods and droughts?

Floods and droughts are nature’s way of getting its water balance wrong by having either too much or too little rain over a long time.

Imagine your bathtub. If you leave the tap running with the drain closed, the tub floods. That is exactly what happens during a flood. When it rains hard for days or weeks, the ground gets so full of water that it cannot soak up any more. The extra water spills onto roads, parks, and houses like your bath overflowing. It can even make rivers grow huge and rush over their banks, turning quiet streams into busy, muddy ribbons that hug your neighbor’s fence.

Floods often happen because the sky pours down too much precipitation (rain or snow) all at once. Sometimes, concrete sidewalks stop water from soaking in, making it run off quickly like a slide into the street.

On the other flip side, think about that puddle on your driveway after a rainstorm. If the sun shines brightly for many days without any new clouds showing up, the puddle shrinks and disappears completely. That is a drought. During a drought, the earth stays thirsty because it does not get enough rain to replace what the sun uses up. The grass turns brown and crunchy like dry crackers, and water holes in parks might shrink or vanish entirely.

Both are just parts of the water cycle. One is not "bad" and one is not "good," they are simply different amounts of water hanging around for too long or too short a time.