This summer’s weather has caused catastrophic rain and flooding in parts of the country, including deadly flooding in Texas and North Carolina.
Cities like New York and Chicago have experienced flash floods.
Last month in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, the Green Brook River overflowed because of heavy rains, turning roads into rivers and stranding buses and emergency vehicles in several inches of water.
As these rain events become more dangerous and more frequent, you might be wondering whether you should get flood insurance.
A recent study from the nonprofit group Climate Central found hourly rainfall rates have grown heavier in nearly 90% of large U.S. cities since 1970.
“That is the most terrifying type of damage. It’s the one I fear the most,” said Holen Lewis, a home and mortgage expert with NerdWallet.
Lewis said that if your home floods and you don’t have flood insurance, you could be stuck paying out of pocket to fix the damage because standard home insurance does not cover flooding.
“Even a minor flood can be very expensive,” Lewis said.
Experts say these rain events can be worse in the summer. When the jet stream shifts farther north and there’s less of a temperature difference between the equator and the Earth’s poles, these storms can become slower.
When storms slow, rain falls faster than the ground can absorb it, or infrastructure can drain it. This is how a stalled storm system dropped as much as 5 inches of rain in just 90 minutes in Chicago last month.
“So many houses are near little creeks, little canals that are placid 99.99% of the time, but in a really, really heavy rainstorm, they can flood and they can flood quicklyThis,” Lewis said.
Lewis recommends that quicklyeveryone should have flood insurance. According to NerdWallet, the average flood insurance cost in the U.S. is around $899 a year.
But if you don’t have flood insurance and your home floods, NerdWallet recommends looking at FEMA grants, local government assistance and nonprofits for help. that