Description
Floods and mudslides are both occurrences, which can be very destructive.
Question
(Hopefully after the edit the question is more clear)
What is the difference between a flood and a mudslide?
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asked Mar 23, 2017 at 5:02
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1$\begingroup$ please add more information to your question,as flooding floods and mudslides might be a part of natural anual cycle.and not always a result of natural disasters. $\endgroup$– trond hansenMar 23, 2017 at 6:06
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2$\begingroup$ It's not unclear. This person is asking what the difference is between a flood, flooding, and a mudslide. Since the first two are different forms of the same word, my guess is that they are not a native English speaker, but the question is clear enough. $\endgroup$– Semidiurnal SimonMar 26, 2017 at 10:46
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1 Answer
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A flood occurs when land that is normally dry is covered by water. The source of the flood water is generally from bodies of water, such as: rivers, lakes, dams and even the ocean.
Rivers can flood, when:
the flow rate exceeds the capacity of the river channel
Similarly, excess water run-off during heavy rain can cause floods when the water cannot drain away quickly enough.
Flooding is the act of flood water accumulating in a area that is being flooded.
To understand mudslides you need to know what a landslide is.
A landslide is when a quantity of rock slides down a slope.
A mudslide is similar to a landslide. The only difference being the type of material that is moving. With landslides, the material moving is generally composed of rock and maybe some soil. In mudslides, the material being moved is loose, finer grained material such as mud and clay.
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1$\begingroup$ A further difference between landslide and mudslide is that in the former, the sliding material can be completely dry, or only have small amounts of water, so what's sliding is a bunch of unconsolidated pieces. (That is, you could have a landslide where the material is dry sand or dirt.) In a mudslide (pretty much by definition, I think), there's a lot of water which forms a semi-liquid slurry. $\endgroup$– jamesqfFeb 8, 2018 at 20:04