“After the rain comes the good weather” and vice versa.

According to forecasts, the new heat wave peak suffered by France should lead this Saturday to rains and thunderstorms throughout the territory.

But this precipitation will not solve the problem of soil drought.

Dr. Rob Thompson of the University of Reading (UK) recently illustrated this phenomenon through an experiment, reports

The HuffPost

.

To show the effects of rainfall on dry soils, the scientist used three glasses of water.

Each of them is placed, face upside down, in contact with three different floors.

The first soil has been properly irrigated and has a tuft of green grass.

The second soil, which is drier, represents the state of the ground after a summer deemed “normal”.

Finally, the third soil is completely dried out, to the point that the grasses have burned.

In this experiment Dr Rob Thompson of @UniRdg_Met shows just how long it takes water to soak into parched ground, illustrating why heavy rainfall after a #drought can be dangerous and might lead to flashfloods.

@R0b1et @UniRdg_water pic.twitter.com/zbb3xLTXdK

— Uni of Reading (@UniofReading) August 10, 2022

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A risk of floods and inundations

Dr. Rob Thompson then measures how long it takes for each soil to absorb all of the water in the glass.

We can thus see that if it only takes 10 seconds for the first soil to absorb water, it takes 53 for the second.

After four minutes, the fourth floor has still failed to mop up the water.

The researcher then decides to lift the glass, spilling its contents.

With this illustration, it is thus easy to see that the heavy rainfall that follows an episode of drought does not allow the soil to humidify deeply.

On the contrary, they can promote the appearance of floods and floods, as has been the case in Death Valley in the United States since the beginning of August.

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