What prevents water from absorbing into the tundra soil?

Permafrost in the ground prevents moisture from absorbing into the soil of the tundra. Freezing of the earth’s crust can reach several kilometers. For a very short summer in these localities, the topsoil has practically no time to warm up, and moisture melts only at the very surface of the earth. However, since ice is stored deeper in the layers, this moisture has nowhere to go, it cannot be absorbed into the ground, and either remains in the soil until the arrival of new cold weather, or flows into water bodies. Thus, the permafrost is preserved for many hundreds of years.