ZIP 28657
Avery County, NC

The heaviest year

2024 is the heaviest year on file: 84 paid claims, 51.5% of the ZIP's total. More than half of everything ever paid here traces to that single year. The largest named event in the record is Hurricane Helene, with 83 claims.

92 of those claims — 56.4% — were filed since 2017. This is not a historical record — most of it is recent.

Named event	Paid claims	Share of record
Hurricane Helene	83	50.9%
Tropical Storm Ivan	23	14.1%
Tropical Storm Fred	5	3.1%

Where the claims sat on the map

Of the 161 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 42 — 26.1% — 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 N Fork Catawba River at Highway 221 (10.1 mi), Watauga River near Foscoe (15.2 mi) and Wilson Creek (NC) at Adako Rd 3 SW Collettsville (15.3 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 28657 →

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.