A flash flood is the rapid rise of water in a stream, river, or low-lying urban area caused by heavy rainfall over a short time, making it the most dangerous type of flood. Flash floods occur due to heavy rain from thunderstorms, hurricanes, tropical storms, or rapid snowmelt. This study aims to explore research patterns and trends related to flash floods published in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. ScientoPy and VOSviewer are used to analyse the relevant publications that were retrieved. The results showed a positive trend in the publication growth pertinent to flash floods in both databases since 1970. The top three research areas that dominate this topic are “water resources”, “geology”, and “environmental sciences & ecology”. Based on a country analysis, the United States actively published research on flash floods, followed by China and France. Notably, this study emphasised that the scholarly practices prevalent in flash flood research have impressively proliferated. The identified trends may assist researchers in recognising themes for further unearthing the domain of flash flood research. Besides, examining the most popular keywords enables researchers to discover the possibility for future research that may be conducted, particularly concerning the annual growth rates observed over the past five years.