The widespread occurrence of flooding and the fact that both precipitation data and river flow data are readily available for many locations provides an excellent opportunity for educators to bring relevant professionally collected data into their teaching. By connecting those data to the use of models, students can collect, interpret, and communicate about data. In this article, the authors describe a five-day lesson sequence along with design principles that were applied in the lessons. The lessons are structured to support students' data literacy skills, conceptual development, and evidence-based reasoning using professionally collected Earth science data.