When Tom and Diane Peterman bought their retirement home on the shore of Black Lake, they tried to take out flood insurance and were told none was available. John Solum was assured his family’s 1940s-era cabin sat outside any flood zone. This spring, both households watched the lake rise and pour through their windows.
Northern Michigan saw historic floods this year, in some spots for the first time anyone can recall. Homes were swamped, dams pushed to the edge of failure and roadways washed out, with dozens of counties placed under a state of emergency. Ice floating on Black Lake tore apart decks and smashed through glass.
“We’ve never seen anything like that. Never,” Solum said. Record April rain fell after record March snow, and thousands of residents found they had no financial protection against the damage.
The failure points back to flood maps. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has not drawn maps for many sparsely populated areas, and its maps do not capture flooding caused by heavy rainfall alone. Black Lake, for instance, lies across two counties, only one of which has a map, from 2012.
First Street, a firm that studies climate risk, found more than twice as many properties nationwide are at significant flood risk once rainfall is included, and four times as many in Michigan. “I couldn’t believe it when we first started building our model how different we were from FEMA,” said Jeremy Porter, the company’s chief economist.
FEMA said 95% of Americans live in areas with maps, calling them “snapshots in time”, but it shed close to 20% of its workforce in 2025, including about a quarter of its most senior staff. Many Michigan communities have never joined the National Flood Insurance Program, where an average policy runs roughly $1,000 for $250,000 worth of coverage.
For Peterman, the gap was personal. She had tried three times to buy coverage and was told she was not in a flood zone, a claim she answered by noting that she lived on a lake.
Sources
- Michigan floods expose lack of info, preparation in many rural areas
- FEMA told these families they weren't in a flood zone. Then ice came through the windows | Fortune
