Flood history / Arizona / ZIP 85253
ZIP 85253
Maricopa County, AZ
Property owners in ZIP 85253 have been paid $3.4M on 106 National Flood Insurance Program claims between 1978 and 2025 — an average of $32K a claim, across 25 separate years in which someone here filed and was paid.
The heaviest year
2014 is the heaviest year on file: 23 paid claims, 21.7% of the ZIP's total. The rest is spread across the other 24 years on file.
16 of those claims — 15.1% — were filed since 2017. The pattern here is still active.
Where the claims sat on the map
Of the 99 claims here that record a rated flood zone, 84 — 84.8% — 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 Indian Bend Wash at Sweetwater Rd (4.9 mi), Salt River at Priest Road-Tempe (7.2 mi) and Reata Pass Wash above Scottsdale (11.9 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 85253 →
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.