50 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 50 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
Urban flooding, on paved ground that cannot absorb water, is often of this type.
Q 02Which adjective describes flooding from rain pooling on saturated or frozen ground, not a river overflowing?
areal
It happens in flat places like floodplains and endorheic basins where water arrives faster than it can soak in or run off.
Q 03A '100-year flood' is one with what probability of occurring in any given year?
1%
The name is misleading: many places can each have 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
Paddy fields are flooded on purpose; land is also flooded intentionally for military or river-management reasons.
Q 05Which of these is a waterborne disease whose spread increases after floods?
cholera
Hepatitis A and E and diarrhoeal diseases are others; malaria and dengue rise too, but via mosquitoes breeding in standing water.
Q 06Periodic flooding sustained ancient peoples along the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and which other river?
the Nile
The annual inundation deposited fertile silt on the fields; the Ganges and Yellow River civilisations depended on the same cycle.
Q 07'Overland flooding' in the flat Red River Valley affects Minnesota, North Dakota and which Canadian province?
Manitoba
The Red River of the North drains north into Lake Winnipeg, so spring melt in the south hits ice still frozen downstream.
Q 08The 1931 floods often ranked the deadliest natural disaster in history struck which country?
China
The Yangtze and Huai rivers burst after drought, snowmelt and rain; estimates of the dead range from 140,000 drowned to 2 to 4 million including famine and disease.
Q 09The 1931 China floods hit which two major cities on the Yangtze?
Wuhan and Nanjing
The government estimated 25 million people were affected; four Yangtze weather stations recorded over 600 mm of rain in a month.
Q 10Which waterway, nicknamed 'China's Sorrow', flooded in 1887, killing at least 930,000?
the Yellow River
The river, nicknamed 'China's Sorrow', overwhelmed its dikes around 28 September after days of heavy rain.
Q 11The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 inundated roughly how many square miles?
27,000
Water stood up to 30 feet deep for months, and 94% of the 630,000 people affected lived in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Q 12Whose handling of the 1927 Mississippi flood as commerce secretary helped propel him to the presidency?
Herbert Hoover
The disaster also helped elect Huey Long governor of Louisiana and pushed many Black Americans north in the Great Migration.
Q 13The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was caused by the failure of which dam upstream of the Pennsylvania town?
the South Fork Dam
The reservoir was a private resort lake owned by a club of Pittsburgh millionaires connected to Carnegie Steel.
Q 21In response to 1953, the Netherlands built which vast system of dams and storm-surge barriers, finished in 1997?
1932
Constructed from 1954 to 1997, it was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by American civil engineers.
Q 22The final piece of the Dutch post-1953 defences, completed in 1997, was which storm-surge barrier?
the Maeslantkering
The plan changed to a movable barrier so the port of Rotterdam could stay open.
Q 23In which year was the Afsluitdijk, which turned the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer, closed?
1932
It came two years ahead of schedule; the engineer Cornelis Lely gave his name to Lelystad, built on reclaimed land.
Q 14How many people did the Johnstown Flood kill?
2,208
For a while the torrent equalled the average flow of the Mississippi; 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
The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club's members were widely blamed, though none was held legally liable.
Q 16The Great Molasses Flood of January 1919 struck which American city?
Boston
A tank of 2.3 million gallons burst in the North End; 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
It killed 21 people and injured 150; the tank belonged to the Purity Distilling Company.
Q 18The North Sea flood of 1953 was caused by what?
a heavy storm surge
It struck the Netherlands, Belgium and eastern England on the night of 31 January to 1 February.
Q 19How many people died in the Netherlands in the 1953 flood, most of them in the province of Zeeland?
1,836
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
The car ferry Princess Victoria also sank in the same storm with 134 dead.
Q 24The Thames Barrier, protecting London from storm surges, has been operational since which year?
1982
The 1953 flood prompted the Waverley Committee to recommend a barrier; the 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
About 229 mm fell in 24 hours on already saturated ground in North Devon.
Q 26The Great Flood of 1993 in the American Midwest ran along the Mississippi and which other great river?
the Missouri
It lasted from April to October and in some measures surpassed even the 1927 flood.
Q 27The 2010 monsoon floods along the Indus basin submerged roughly what share of Pakistan's land area?
one-fifth
About 20 million people were affected; UN chief 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
The climate minister claimed a third of the country was underwater; melting glaciers 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
Warmer sea surface temperatures are also thought to intensify monsoon rainfall.
Q 30A 2007 flood in which country destroyed more than one million houses?
Bangladesh
Long-term displacement is one of the main secondary impacts of flooding.