The water level of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya, is rising. Is this impacting on the livelihoods of the pastoralists in the region? According to a report from UNDP (2021) and an article by the BBC (Inwood, 2022), portions of the coast and some villages are being submerged, while dry-river floods are happening inland. All this during a severe drought. The concomitance of drought, floods and water-level rising around Lake Turkana is baffling. Even a tentative explanation needs to consider historical weather series, active volcanism, climate change and man-made landscape alterations. In 2019, the eastern areas of Africa were hit by a weather anomaly providing 150 to 400 per cent (Somalia) above normal rainfall (Nicholson et al., 2022). Called Indian Ocean Dipole, this event altered the El Niño sequence that regulates rains in the area (Ying Zhang and Yan Du, 2021). The increased humidity changed the wind pattern too; the fast evaporation by wind led to abnormal warming and dryness: long rains gave way to drought. The floods occurring around Lake Turkana are of two types: a) rising lake waters submerging lowlands near the coast; and b) flash floods out of dry river beds (lugga). In the second case, pastoralists acknowledge a delay effect: rain water collects underground and fills their hand-dug wells months after the rains, sometimes with unexpected intensity. Pastoralists are aware of the risk, and seldom make camp inside a lugga. The heavy rains of 2019 destroyed the hand-dug wells (reducing outtakes) and compacted the alluvial soil in the dry river beds, the temporary feeders of Lake Turkana. Without any outlet or offtake, underground waters may meet the rising level of lake Turkana, which becomes a counter-acting force, resulting in explosive flash floods.