Short-term debt has to be repaid or rolled, and rolling depends on markets being open. A company funding long-lived assets with short-term paper is running maturity mismatch, the same structure that breaks banks in a crisis. This is the heart of refinancing-risk.
Look at it next to cash-and-equivalents and undrawn facilities disclosed in the footnotes. Coverage of near-term maturities matters more than the headline leverage ratio when credit conditions tighten.
Example: Northwind Tools carries $60M of short-term debt, the current portion of a term loan, against $210M of cash and an undrawn $150M revolver. Coverage is comfortable.
Related: long-term-debt, total-debt, refinancing-risk, current-liabilities, covenant