Flood history / Michigan / ZIP 48706
ZIP 48706
Bay County, MI
Property owners in ZIP 48706 have been paid $1.3M on 298 National Flood Insurance Program claims between 1979 and 2021 — an average of $5K a claim, across 29 separate years in which someone here filed and was paid.
The heaviest year
1986 is the heaviest year on file: 116 paid claims, 38.9% of the ZIP's total. That one year accounts for more than a quarter of the ZIP's entire record.
35 of those claims — 11.7% — were filed since 2017. The bulk of this ZIP's record is older than that.
Where the claims sat on the map
Of the 281 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 166 — 59.1% — were on properties rated outside the mapped high-risk area, in a B, C or X zone. Most of the paid flooding in this ZIP happened to properties the maps did not treat as high risk. 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 Saginaw River at Essexville Tidal Gauge (6.0 mi), Saginaw River at Saginaw (12.6 mi) and Tittabawassee River at Midland (14.0 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 48706 →
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.