For soil to be “afraid of water” might sound like an oxymoron - since normally soils love to absorb water, right? But hydrophobic soils aren’t “afraid” of water, but rather repels it.

This happens many times during periods of extreme drought. The ground becomes very hard from the lack of rain, and the water isn’t able to seep through. These soils are super easy to spot because you will see the water just beading on top and simply running off. It does this because the dryness will cause a waxy coating on top of the soil, which causes the water to repel.

In desert climates, you will see this quite often. Hot, dry conditions aid in the development of hydrophobic soils in these regions. Because soils in these areas don’t absorb water well, flash flooding becomes a huge concern, as water just runs off and therefore flooding can happen quite quickly.

If you find your garden’s soil becoming hydrophobic there are some things you can do:

• Using a wetting agent: Wetting agents can be found at gardening stores and can help break up the waxy coating that’s preventing the water from absorbing.
• Submerging your potted plants in water: If your potted plants have hydrophobic soil, you can fill a larger bucket with water and submerge the entire pot. Leave the plant in there for 20-30 minutes. (This might sound crazy, but I did this with my mums in the fall and it worked like a charm)!
• Improve soil quality: You can achieve this by adding organic matter to the soil then placing a small amount of mulch on top to help prevent the soil from drying out.

Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.