ZIP 19720
New Castle County, DE

The heaviest year

1999 is the heaviest year on file: 18 paid claims, 12.4% of the ZIP's total. The rest is spread across the other 36 years on file. The largest named event in the record is Hurricane Floyd, with 18 claims.

13 of those claims — 9.0% — were filed since 2017. The bulk of this ZIP's record is older than that.

Named event	Paid claims	Share of record
Hurricane Floyd	18	12.4%
Hurricane Irene	17	11.7%
Hurricane Sandy	14	9.7%

Where the claims sat on the map

Of the 143 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 45 — 31.5% — 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 Delaware River at Delaware City (IN MLLW) (4.5 mi), Christina River at Newport (IN MLLW) (4.5 mi) and Red Clay Creek at Stanton (5.2 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 19720 →

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.