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Every dot is a building. Its color says what the city's flood models predict for that spot under the storm scenario you pick on the left.
New York's Stormwater Flood Maps model what happens when rain falls faster than the sewers can drain it. Each map pairs a rainfall intensity with a sea level.
| Extreme storm | 3.66 in/hr rainfall with the 2080 high-tide projection (58 in of sea level rise, NPCC 90th percentile). Hurricane Ida dropped 3.15 in/hr on Central Park in September 2021. |
|---|---|
| Moderate + 2050 seas | 2.13 in/hr rainfall with the 2050 high-tide projection. |
| Moderate, today | 2.13 in/hr rainfall at current sea levels — roughly a storm that arrives every few years now. |
The city's models only map flooding of at least 4 inches covering at least a quarter-acre, so small puddles and single-basement flooding are invisible to them. Nothing here accounts for private drainage, a clogged catch basin, or the condition of your building.
The violet halo marks tax lots inside FEMA's 1%-annual-chance flood zone (the preliminary 2015 FIRM). That's storm surge from a hurricane or nor'easter — a different hazard from rainfall, and the one that drives flood-insurance requirements. Lots in a VE zone also face breaking waves.
Eleven of the thirteen people who died in New York during Ida drowned in basement apartments. PLUTO records a basement grade for most one-to-three-family homes, so the map can isolate buildings with a below-grade basement sitting inside a flood footprint — of them citywide under the extreme storm. The field is unverified for many commercial and large residential buildings, so treat "no basement" as "not recorded" rather than proof.
Spatial overlay of flood footprints onto tax lots by Mythili Vinnakota and Anna Weber. A lot is flagged for a category if any part of it intersects that category's footprint, so a large lot can be flagged when the building on it is not. Neighborhood and ZIP shares are computed over tax lots; the dots on the map are buildings, and a single lot can carry many.
This is not a flood-insurance determination and not a substitute for one. It is a research map built from citywide models. For an official determination, use FEMA's Flood Map Service Center; for what to do about it, see FloodHelpNY.