Flooding in New York City hits two distinct sets of neighborhoods depending on the type of storm. Coastal surge flooding from hurricanes and nor’easters concentrates along the shorelines of southern Brooklyn, southern Queens, and Staten Island’s east shore. Rainfall flooding, which can strike anywhere, tends to be worst in low-lying inland neighborhoods like Flushing, Jamaica, and Canarsie, where aging sewers can’t keep up with intense downpours.
Coastal Flood Zones: Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island
New York City’s coastline faces serious storm surge risk. During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, higher-than-normal tides combined with powerful winds to send water rushing onto the shoreline, damaging hundreds of thousands of homes. Of the 52 people who died from storm-related injuries, 44% were on Staten Island, 25% in Queens, and 23% in Brooklyn. Nearly all of those deaths occurred in zones where the mayor had ordered evacuations.
The city’s official Flood Vulnerability Index flags southern Brooklyn and southern Queens as especially vulnerable to coastal surges. These areas sit at low elevations near the ocean, and neighborhoods like the Rockaways, Coney Island, Red Hook, and the eastern shore of Staten Island bear the brunt during any major coastal storm. FEMA flood maps, available through the agency’s online portal, show the official 100-year floodplain for every block in the city.
Inland Flooding: Where Rain Overwhelms the Sewers
Coastal flooding gets more attention, but rainfall flooding is a growing and less predictable threat. When Hurricane Ida hit in September 2021, rain fell faster than the city’s stormwater infrastructure could handle, causing unprecedented inland flooding far from the coast. Fourteen people died, and 10 of those deaths were drownings in basement apartments in Queens.
Unlike surge flooding, which follows mapped coastlines, rainfall flooding can happen anywhere in the city. It tends to be worst where pavement covers nearly every surface and drainage pipes are already at their limit. Research on the Tallman Island sewershed, which covers parts of Flushing and Astoria in Queens, found that drainage pipes exceeded 80% capacity during heavy rain, with standing water lasting more than 24 hours in some spots. The northwest and central sections of that sewershed repeatedly operated near full capacity, a sign of chronic infrastructure stress rather than a one-time failure.
Cloudbursts, the intense short-duration rainstorms increasingly common with climate change, push stormwater and raw sewage back through combined sewer lines and onto streets, into subway stations, and down into basement-level homes.
Basement Apartments: The Deadliest Risk
New York City has roughly 424,800 basements and cellars in one-, two-, and three-family homes across the five boroughs, and an estimated 136,200 of them face significantly increased flood risk from extreme rainfall. During Ida, 11 of the 13 people who died in the city drowned in mostly unregulated basement apartments in Queens and Brooklyn.
The neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of vulnerable basements include Jamaica, Hollis, St. Albans, and South Jamaica in Queens (Community District 12), as well as Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village, and Ridgewood (Community District 5). In Brooklyn, Canarsie and Flatlands (Community District 18) stand out. About 5,500 basements citywide sit in areas at risk for both inland rainfall flooding and coastal storm surge, making them the most dangerous addresses in any storm scenario. Many of these are in historically Black homeownership neighborhoods like Hollis, Jamaica, and Canarsie, where residents face increasing flood exposure in the coming decades.
How Sandy and Ida Flooded Different Parts of the City
Sandy and Ida are the two most important recent flood events in New York City, and they illustrate why no single flood map tells the whole story. Sandy was a coastal surge event. Water came from the ocean, pushed inland by wind and amplified by high tides and a full moon. The worst damage ran along the waterfront: the Rockaways, Staten Island’s South Shore, lower Manhattan, and Red Hook.
Ida was the opposite. It was a rainfall event where water fell from the sky faster than it could drain. The worst flooding happened miles from the coast in interior Queens, where basement apartments filled in minutes. The city’s five real-time flood sensors at the time were located in Gowanus and near JFK Airport, which meant almost no live data existed for the hardest-hit inland areas. The sensor network has since expanded.
Manhattan’s East Side Protection Project
The largest active flood mitigation project in the city is the East Side Coastal Resiliency initiative, which aims to protect Manhattan’s East Side from East 25th Street south to Montgomery Street. Jointly funded by the city and federal government, it’s designed to reduce flood risk from coastal storms and rising seas for roughly 110,000 residents. Rather than building a visible wall, the project integrates flood barriers into redesigned parkland and waterfront open spaces.
Construction began in fall 2020 and is expected to continue through 2026. The project takes advantage of natural high points in the terrain at its northern and southern ends, pinch points in the 100-year floodplain where the coastline rises enough to close off the flood protection system. Phase 2 construction is currently underway in the northern sections of the project area.
Sea Level Rise and What It Means for Flooding
Sea levels around New York City rose 8 inches between 1970 and now. Under federal intermediate projections, they’re expected to rise another 11 inches by 2050. That additional rise doesn’t just mean slightly higher water during storms. It raises the baseline for every tide cycle, which means today’s moderate coastal floods become more frequent and today’s rare surge events reach further inland.
For neighborhoods already sitting at the edge of the floodplain, even a few inches of sea level rise can shift them from “occasionally wet during major storms” to “regularly flooded during strong tides.” Combined with increasing rainfall intensity, more of the city will face flooding from both directions: the ocean pushing in and the sky pouring down faster than drains can handle.
How to Check Your Address
FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center lets you search any NYC address to see whether it falls within a designated flood hazard zone. These maps primarily reflect coastal and riverine flood risk. For rainfall and stormwater flooding, the city’s FloodNet sensor network provides real-time street-level flood data at a growing number of locations. NOAA’s Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper offers a broader view of which communities, infrastructure, and natural resources sit in harm’s way. The National Weather Service also maintains a coastal flood page with active hazard overlays for the New York City area during storm events.