Flood history / Pennsylvania / ZIP 18640
ZIP 18640
Luzerne County, PA
Property owners in ZIP 18640 have been paid $11.0M on 269 National Flood Insurance Program claims between 1978 and 2019 — an average of $41K a claim, across 20 separate years in which someone here filed and was paid.
The heaviest year
2011 is the heaviest year on file: 62 paid claims, 23.0% of the ZIP's total. The rest is spread across the other 19 years on file. The largest named event in the record is Tropical Storm Lee, with 62 claims.
4 of those claims — 1.5% — were filed since 2017. The bulk of this ZIP's record is older than that.
| Named event | Paid claims | Share of record |
|---|---|---|
| Tropical Storm Lee | 62 | 23.0% |
| Tropical Storm Ivan | 46 | 17.1% |
Where the claims sat on the map
Of the 260 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 124 — 47.7% — 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 Lackawanna River at Old Forge (4.3 mi), Susquehanna River at Wilkes Barre (7.8 mi) and Lackawanna River at Parker St Bridge (11.2 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 18640 →
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.