This is also called a sandwash (think about it). Anyway, it's a streambed that carries water only during and maybe immediately after rain storms. Intermittently. Every now and then. Often over-enthusiastically. "We camped in the dry wash to get out of the wind but had to move to avoid the flood."
Right.
Also one way to wash your car. If you don't especially like the paint. And, given that a wash is the dry bed of an intermittent stream, a dry wash must be on the severely scary end of dehydrated, right? But life turns out that way sometimes.
At least sandwash is a nice smooth word. You can do something with a word like that, given a tad of imagination. Could be a rodent bath, maybe? They like sand. A cozy rodent bath, in a protected nook, warm but shady, at least until the flash flood hits. Then it's all outwash. Flush time. Bye-bye.
Outwash.
Outwash, rat wash, applesauce, balderdash, baloney, bilge, blague, blah, blather, blatherskite, bosh, bull, bunk, bunkum, bushwa, claptrap, cobblers, codswallop, crock, double-talk, drip, drivel, drool, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, flapdoodle, flimflam, flummadiddle, fudge, gas, gook, guff, hogwash, hokum, hooey, horsefeathers, hot air, humbug, jazz, jiggery-pokery, malarkey, meshuggaas, moonshine, piffle, pishposh, poppycock, punk, rot, rubbish, slipslop, tomfoolery, tommyrot, tosh, trash, trumpery, twaddle, whangdoodle, and windbagger. They all work. Stuff that goes through your head while you're still wrapped in your sleeping bag, being swept downstream to your doom.
And the moon laughs, silently as always.
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Me? Trying to take it in only small sips.