Flood history / Wisconsin / ZIP 53217
ZIP 53217
Milwaukee County, WI
Property owners in ZIP 53217 have been paid $1.9M on 260 National Flood Insurance Program claims between 1978 and 2026 — an average of $7K a claim, across 27 separate years in which someone here filed and was paid.
The heaviest year
2025 is the heaviest year on file: 57 paid claims, 21.9% of the ZIP's total. The rest is spread across the other 26 years on file. The largest named event in the record is 2025-08-MilwaukeeMetro-Flood, with 56 claims.
64 of those claims — 24.6% — were filed since 2017. The pattern here is still active.
| Named event | Paid claims | Share of record |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-08-MilwaukeeMetro-Flood | 56 | 21.5% |
| Storm | 24 | 9.2% |
Where the claims sat on the map
Of the 247 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 82 — 33.2% — 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 Milwaukee River at Milwaukee-Estabrook Park (4.0 mi), Milwaukee River near Cedarburg (8.6 mi) and Menomonee River at Wauwatosa (8.9 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 53217 →
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.