Roanoke city, VA: flood risk, in FEMA's own numbers
On FEMA's National Risk Index, Roanoke city scores at the 84.1th percentile for flood hazard, rated "Relatively Moderate" — a middling flood hazard by national standards. The hazard here is driven by inland rivers and flash flooding rather than the coast — FEMA's model puts a flood event here at about 1.6 times a year. County-wide, not parcel-specific: FEMA's real flood-zone map is queried live, never shipped as a download.
Roanoke city's flood-insurance compliance gap
FEMA hasn't published a residential structure count for Roanoke city's mapped flood zone, so a reliable mandatory-compliance percentage can't be computed here — see the data quality guide for why this gap exists for roughly a quarter of US counties. Looking beyond the mandated zone, 0.7% of all residential structures in Roanoke city carry flood coverage voluntarily or otherwise — relevant because most NFIP claims nationally come from outside the mapped SFHA.
Where Roanoke city ranks
Among the 3144 US counties FEMA scores for flood hazard, Roanoke city ranks 525 — 1 being the highest hazard nationally — and 633 by population among all 3144 counties covered here, where 1 is the largest. Roanoke city, Virginia is home to about 97,912 people across 42.521 square miles of land.
Checking a specific address in Roanoke city
Across all of Roanoke city's 33,522 residential structures, 225 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
Where Roanoke city's figures come from
Every figure on this page traces to a named FEMA dataset, documented in the methodology guide. Roanoke city's compliance figure is one of the ones affected by FEMA's incomplete denominator data — the data quality guide explains what that means and how many counties it touches.