The flash drought of 2012 in the US Great Plains had devastating impacts in terms of economic losses and crop failures, costing more than $30 billion in damages. Flash droughts are challenging to predict with early warning signals due to their rapidly evolving nature. This motivates research for monitoring, explaining, and improving the forecasting capabilities of flash droughts events. We conduct an event-based modeling experiment to identify the influence of large-scale irrigation on the 2012 US Great Plains flash drought. We hypothesize that the addition of irrigation dynamics humidifies the atmospheric boundary layer and thus inhibits the rapid drawdown of soil moisture at the onset and development of the event. The results of this study help in developing mitigation strategies and inform the incorporation of land management into weather and climate models.