When winter draws near, the citizens of Cauldron begin shoring up their homes and businesses in preperation for the flood season. Since the town is essentially built inside a large bowl, the rainy seasons of winter can be particularly dangerous. The mouth of the dormant volcano catches the falling rain with great efficiency, and the gutters and alleyways of Cauldron quickly become filled with turbulent rivers that more often than not overflow into the streets as they drain down the inner surface of the volcano and into the Crater Lake. The rainfall can quickly overcome the lake's drainage into the Underdark and nearby rivers. As a result, the waterlevel slowly creeps up, flooding the lower buildings and forcing their inhabitants to flee to higher ground. Since the buildings along the lakeshore tend to be poorly constructed, and their inhabitants poor, sick, and destitute, the damage done by these yearly floods can be devastating.

After a particularly wet winter several decades ago, when Crater Lake's waters reached Ash Avenue and completely submerged many of the lower buildings, the town's leaders decided to do something about the recurring problem. Representatives of the churches of Pelor, Wee Jas and Kord got together under the urging of the then-high-priestess of the church of St Cuthbert, pooled their resources and created several wands of control water to combat the next flood season. That winter clerics from these four temples patrolled the lower streets of Cauldron and fought back the flood using the wands. The citizens were grateful for the aid, and assisted with sandbagging and shoring of buildings where they could; even with the magic wands, the flood waters could still do significant damage.

So successful were these measures that, after that flood season was ended, the city of Cauldron erupted into a massive festival. In the years to follow, this grew into a tradition, the Flood Festival, beginning earlier each year until it started before the first rains fell.