San Diego Floodings & California Flood Insurance San Diego.

To understand if your property is at risk of flooding.

First, you have to understand all waterways and bodies of water are subject to floods in and around San Diego.

Flooding in San Diego is caused is when the volume of water exceeds the capacity of the rivers, streams, brooks, canals, lakes, and spillways.

With 17 miles of coastline and 4,600 acres of a variety of beach communities, San Diego, CA flood map also has the potential of tidal waters pushing inland by coastal storms.

Flooding will occur in localized low spots, even if the area is not close to a body of water.

San Diego can be prone to flash floods & mudslides.

San Diego flood risk maps

FEMA, which stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency is the government branch charged with keeping us safe.

Since 1973 FEMA has taken on the massive mandate to map all the flooding risks across the country. These are Called FIRM or Flood Insurance risk maps.

According to FEMA flood maps done for California flood insurance San Diego County, Mission Valley is considered one of the most at-risk areas to see flooding.

California Flood Insurance San Diego

There are new maps for San Diego County,

San Diego flood

San Diego Flood Maps have 4,876 properties in the high-risk flood zone.

And there were new maps this 2019.

The area that is most affected by the new San Diego County Flood maps is Del Mar, and Newport Beach, from 17th Street north to San Dieguito River.

FEMA flood maps that will take effect in two months have the potential to send the insurance cost for these properties up.

The good news is that if you bought your flood insurance policy within 12 months of the new map, you will get a heavily subsidized policy.

Flooding in San Diego 100-year flood map

FEMA came up with this term, the 100-year flood zone, and it is very confusing.

Using the 100-year flood risk as a guide, FEMA mapped San Diego into high risk, moderate-risk, and low-risk flood zone.

Several areas within San Diego city limits and San Diego County are considered high-risk flood zones or Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA). This means that structures in these areas (flood zone maps) have a one-in-four chance of flooding at least once during a thirty-year period. 

Please note that moderate or low-risk flood zones do not mean that there is no risk.

It just simply means that your property might not be required to purchase a flood policy by their lender. It doesn’t mean that the property won’t flood.

If your property is within the high-risk flood zone map for San Diego and you have a mortgage, your lender will require you to purchase a flood insurance policy.

Our Government wants us all to have flood insurance coverage, and in light of recent flooding events, I would agree with them.

Anywhere it can rain, it can flood. This is even more critical in areas where there is minimal perception.

All you would need is a small shift in weather patterns to get more water than has hit the region in a long time.

90% of all the natural disasters in the United States involve flooding.

Frequently the areas that are in low or moderate risk areas are often affected.

Oftentimes, these properties do not have flood insurance thinking they are safe from flooding because they are not in the high-risk flood zone.

Remember, the High-risk flood maps are for the Catastrophic event of flooding, meaning large-scale flood.

Sadly FEMA flood maps didn’t calculate or consider smaller-scale floods.

Why didn’t FEMA map the potential of smaller floods?

We would have to go back and look at the mandate, which was to help the country prepare for and offset some of the disaster relief funds needed in the significant flooding event.

They were only looking at and mapping vast areas that could flood.

We are all at risk for smaller-scale floods

If your property is in a low or moderate-risk flood map, you could be in the (50-year or 10-year) flood zone and not even know it.

The good news here is that you can buy a flood policy for any zone your structure is in.