Eli5: Where does all the water go during a drought?

Question

I know it evaporates but shouldn’t it it form clouds the will eventually rain back down?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Water generally flows from land into rivers and those flow into oceans, then that water evaporates and rains down back over land. (there is also a lot of rain from oceans back to oceans and land back to land, but the big movement of water that matters in this case is oceans to rain on land and rivers to oceans)

But sometimes the wind blows in a different directions and the rain doesn’t fall over a certain area for a while, and when the ground is totally dry then it doesn’t absorb the water well and it flows into rivers and those rivers back into the ocean.