Flood history / Massachusetts / ZIP 02461
ZIP 02461
Middlesex County, MA
Property owners in ZIP 02461 have been paid $567K on 101 National Flood Insurance Program claims between 1978 and 2026 — an average of $6K a claim, across 22 separate years in which someone here filed and was paid.
The heaviest year
1996 is the heaviest year on file: 19 paid claims, 18.8% of the ZIP's total. The rest is spread across the other 21 years on file. The largest named event in the record is Not a named storm, with 13 claims.
10 of those claims — 9.9% — were filed since 2017. The bulk of this ZIP's record is older than that.
| Named event | Paid claims | Share of record |
|---|---|---|
| Not a named storm | 13 | 12.9% |
| March 2010 Nor'easter | 10 | 9.9% |
Where the claims sat on the map
Of the 97 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 35 — 36.1% — were on properties rated outside the mapped high-risk area, in a B, C or X zone. Being outside the high-risk zone has not meant much here. Flood insurance is not required outside the high-risk zone, and most properties there do not carry it — so these counts come from the minority who did.
The water near this ZIP
The closest gauges publishing official flood thresholds are Charles River at Waltham (4.0 mi), Charles River at Dover (5.0 mi) and Muddy River at Brookline (5.1 mi). A gauge describes one point on one river — it will not see street drainage, sewer backup, storm surge or flash flooding.
Read current gauge conditions for 02461 →
What this does not say
These are paid National Flood Insurance Program claims, nothing more. They count insured properties whose owners filed and were paid, so they are a floor on how often this ZIP has flooded — never a measure of how likely it is to flood next. Uninsured flooding leaves no trace here at all.
The figures are aggregates published by FEMA. No individual claim, address or policyholder appears on this page or in the data behind it. Nothing here is a forecast, a warning, or advice about insurance.