Charlotte, NC

Charlotte's flood score of 52 and heat score of 67—at the 60th and 77th national percentiles respectively—place the city in moderate-risk territory by national standards. The 2024 urban flood advisories following intense storms demonstrated what fast development without equivalent drainage investment actually produces: repeated roadway flooding, creek overflow, and infrastructure pressure in areas that do not market themselves as flood-exposed. Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing metros in the US, and growth-driven impervious surface addition is changing runoff behavior faster than flood maps are being updated. What we noticed: small creeks in Charlotte produce outsized neighborhood-level flood variation. A property near a creek corridor in Eastover or Ballantyne can underwrite very differently from a comparable home 300 meters away. South End's rapid redevelopment in 28203 has compressed drainage assumptions in ways that older stormwater models did not anticipate. Ballantyne's suburban flood and heat tradeoffs diverge from the urban core in ways that a single city-level risk number cannot represent. Annual premiums range from $1,400 to $3,100—stable and among the lower ranges in this dataset—but localized flood pressure can push specific creek-adjacent properties above that range. Hurricane at the 27th national percentile is minimal; Charlotte is not a coastal market. Tree-loss after storm events is a growing maintenance and heat-island concern in established neighborhoods where canopy cover is a primary quality-of-life differentiator. Heat at the 77th national percentile is moderate—but the Piedmont summer has extended and intensified, and heat-island differentials between the urban core and tree-covered suburbs are measurable. Charlotte's climate diligence is a creek-mapping and drainage exercise, not a coastal risk framework.

— Open Data Collective