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49 free Floods trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Floods trivia for weather watchers, geography students and anyone who has wondered what a '100-year flood' actually means. The quiz starts with the science: areal, river, coastal and flash flooding, the six-hour rule, why levees make things worse, the diseases that follow the water, and why the ancient civilisations of the Nile and Yellow River depended on rivers bursting their banks. The middle rounds cover the great disasters: the 1931 China floods, often ranked the deadliest natural disaster in history, the 1887 Yellow River flood, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 that made Herbert Hoover's name and fed the Great Migration, the South Fork Dam that drowned Johnstown, the 1953 North Sea flood that killed 1,836 in the Netherlands and 307 in England, Lynmouth, the 1993 Midwest flood, and Pakistan's monsoon catastrophes of 2010 and 2022. Later questions turn to the engineering answers, the Delta Works, the Zuiderzee's Afsluitdijk and the Thames Barrier, plus the flood myths of Gilgamesh, Deucalion and Genesis, and the January day in 1919 when 2.3 million gallons of molasses swept through Boston at 35 mph. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our natural disasters, weather and rivers quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Flash floods have a gap between rainfall and flooding of fewer than how many hours?
Six
Six hours: the US National Weather Service defines a flash flood as one beginning within six hours of the causative rain; paved urban ground that cannot absorb water produces them often.
Q 02Which adjective describes flooding from rain pooling on saturated or frozen ground, not a river overflowing?
areal
Areal flooding: on flat ground such as floodplains and endorheic basins, rain arrives faster than saturated or frozen soil can absorb it or the land can drain it, so water pools in place.
Q 03A '100-year flood' is one with what probability of occurring in any given year?
1%
A 100-year flood has a 1% chance of being equalled or exceeded in any given year; the name misleads, since many places can each see their own 100-year flood in the same year.
Q 04Deliberate agricultural flooding is used to prepare fields for growing which semi-aquatic crop?
rice
Rice is grown in paddy fields that are flooded on purpose; land is also flooded deliberately for military defence or for river management.
Q 05Which of these is a waterborne disease whose spread increases after floods?
cholera
Cholera spreads through water contaminated with sewage, so outbreaks follow floods; hepatitis A and typhoid are other waterborne risks, while malaria rises via mosquitoes breeding in standing water.
Q 06Periodic flooding sustained ancient peoples along the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and which other river?
the Nile
The Nile's annual inundation deposited fertile silt on Egyptian fields each summer; Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates and the Indus cities depended on the same seasonal cycle.
Q 07'Overland flooding' in the flat Red River Valley affects Minnesota, North Dakota and which Canadian province?
Manitoba
Manitoba: the Red River of the North flows north past Winnipeg into Lake Winnipeg, so spring melt upstream in the Dakotas meets river ice not yet thawed downstream and spreads across the flat valley.
Q 08A 1963 landslide into which Italian dam's reservoir sent a wave that killed about 2,000?
the Vajont Dam
The Vajont Dam in the Dolomites survived intact, but on 9 October 1963 a landslide of some 260 million cubic metres into its reservoir sent a wave over the crest that destroyed Longarone and killed about 2,000 people.
Q 09The 1931 floods hit which two major cities on the Yangtze?
Wuhan and Nanjing
Wuhan and Nanjing, then the capital, were both inundated in summer 1931; the government estimated 25 million people were affected, and four Yangtze stations recorded over 600 mm of rain in a single month.
Q 10Which waterway, nicknamed 'China's Sorrow', flooded in 1887, killing at least 930,000?
the Yellow River
The Yellow River burst its dikes near Zhengzhou in Henan in late September 1887 after days of heavy rain; death estimates run from 930,000 to about two million.
Q 11The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 inundated roughly how many square miles?
27,000
The 1927 flood inundated about 27,000 square miles of the lower Mississippi valley, with water up to 30 feet deep standing for months; Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana bore most of the damage.
Q 12Whose handling of the 1927 Mississippi flood as commerce secretary helped propel him to the presidency?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover, then commerce secretary, ran the relief effort and rode the publicity to the presidency in 1928; the disaster also helped elect Huey Long governor of Louisiana.
Q 13The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was caused by the failure of which dam upstream of the Pennsylvania town?
the South Fork Dam
Q 21Which system of dams and storm-surge barriers did the Netherlands build after the 1953 flood?
the Delta Works
The Delta Works, built from 1954 to 1997, shortened the coastline by closing off the estuaries of Zeeland and South Holland with a chain of dams, sluices and storm-surge barriers.
Q 22The final piece of the Dutch post-1953 defences, completed in 1997, was which storm-surge barrier?
the Maeslantkering
The Maeslantkering, two huge swinging gates on the Nieuwe Waterweg near Rotterdam, was completed in 1997 as the final element of the post-1953 defences; gates were chosen over a dam so the port could stay open.
Q 23In which year was the Afsluitdijk, which turned the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer, closed?
The South Fork Dam, about 14 miles upstream, gave way on 31 May 1889 after heavy rain, releasing a private resort lake owned by a club of Pittsburgh millionaires.
Q 14How many people did the Johnstown Flood kill?
2,208
2,208 people died (some counts say 2,209); for a while the torrent equalled the average flow of the Mississippi, and Clara Barton's Red Cross mounted its first major disaster relief there.
Q 15Which Pittsburgh industrialist led the group that made the Johnstown reservoir a private resort?
Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick led the Pittsburgh speculators who bought the reservoir in 1879 and turned it into a fishing and hunting club; members were widely blamed, but none was held legally liable.
Q 16The Great Molasses Flood of January 1919 struck which American city?
Boston
Boston: a tank holding 2.3 million gallons burst in the North End on 15 January 1919; locals claimed the area smelled of molasses on hot days for decades.
Q 17Roughly how fast did the wave of molasses travel through the streets in 1919?
35 mph
The wave moved at about 35 mph (56 km/h) and stood some 25 feet high; it killed 21 people and injured about 150, and the tank belonged to the Purity Distilling Company.
Q 18The North Sea flood of 1953 was caused by what?
a heavy storm surge
A heavy storm surge, driven by a severe northerly windstorm over the North Sea, struck the Netherlands, Belgium and eastern England on the night of 31 January to 1 February 1953.
Q 19How many people died in the Netherlands in the 1953 flood, most of them in the province of Zeeland?
1,836
1,836 people died in the Netherlands, most of them in Zeeland's island polders; the Dutch call it simply the Watersnoodramp, the Flood Disaster.
Q 20The 1953 flood killed 58 people at which low-lying spot in the Thames estuary in Essex?
Canvey Island
Canvey Island, off the Essex coast, was inundated with the loss of 58 lives; the car ferry Princess Victoria also sank in the same storm in the North Channel.
1932
The Afsluitdijk was closed on 28 May 1932 after five years of construction and opened to traffic in 1933; the engineer Cornelis Lely gave his name to Lelystad, built on reclaimed land.
Q 24The Thames Barrier, protecting London from storm surges, has been operational since which year?
1982
The Thames Barrier became operational in 1982 and was formally opened by the Queen in May 1984; its rising sector gates were Charles Draper's idea, and it stands at Woolwich.
Q 25The deadly Lynmouth Flood of August 1952 followed a night of extreme rain on which upland?
Exmoor
Exmoor received about 229 mm of rain in 24 hours on 15 August 1952 on already saturated ground, sending the East and West Lyn rivers through Lynmouth and killing 34 people.
Q 26The Great Flood of 1993 in the American Midwest ran along the Mississippi and which other great river?
the Missouri
The Missouri and the upper Mississippi both flooded from April to October 1993 after months of rain; the crest at St. Louis near their confluence set a record, and in some measures the flood surpassed 1927.
Q 27The 2010 monsoon floods along the Indus basin submerged roughly what share of Pakistan's land area?
one-fifth
About one-fifth of Pakistan's land area was under water and some 20 million people were affected; UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it the worst disaster he had ever seen.
Q 28Pakistan's 2022 floods killed 1,739 people and caused about how much damage?
$40 billion
Damage was put at about $40 billion by Pakistan's government; the climate minister said a third of the country was under water, and glacial melt after a heatwave added to record monsoon rain.
Q 29Melting glaciers contributed to the 2022 Pakistan floods, causing glacial flooding in which northern region?
Gilgit-Baltistan
Gilgit-Baltistan, home to thousands of Karakoram and Himalayan glaciers, saw glacial lake outburst floods after the 2022 heatwave; one destroyed the Hassanabad bridge in Hunza in May.
Q 30In the Atrahasis epic, which god secretly warns his priest of the flood and tells him to build a boat?
Enki
Enki, god of fresh water and wisdom, whispers the warning through a reed wall, defying Enlil's plan to drown mankind; the story predates Genesis and shares its structure.