Yes, Wapping has a serious flood risk, and most of it comes from the Thames. About half the area is in the highest river-and-sea flood zone. Slightly more is once a climate allowance is added. Rain is a smaller problem, and the river is the big one. A riverside postcode puts you on the riverbank, in insurance terms as well.
The Environment Agency puts about 51% of Wapping's postcodes in flood zone 3, the band it maps as most likely to flood from rivers or the sea. Another 2% fall in flood zone 2, the medium-probability band that runs beyond zone 3. The two bands are exclusive, so the smaller number is the outer fringe and does not include the larger one. The name Wapping may come from an old word for marsh, and the land itself has never quite let that go.
On a broader measure that counts any of several flood indicators, surface water among them, about 6% of Wapping's postcodes are rated high risk, 13% medium and 22% low. A postcode only needs one indicator to count, so this measure is about something different from the zones above, and the two sets of figures should not be added together. The lower postcode shares mostly reflect how few streets the rain on its own puts in trouble.
With the Environment Agency's climate-change allowance added, the share of postcodes in the flood zones rises to about 55%. That is its modelled view of a wetter future. The modelling assumes the river does not get smaller.
All this matters most when you buy cover. A home in a mapped flood zone can cost more to insure and may need a specialist policy, and the floor the flat is on makes a real difference. Get an insurance quote for the exact flat, including the floor, while you are still deciding.
Counted by individual property, the Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists 4,878 properties in postcodes that carry some risk. Of those, 23 are rated high, none medium, 58 low and 4,379 very low. Postcodes with no risk at all are left out of that count entirely. The property count is the gentler picture, because a flat three floors up shares a postcode with the ground floor without sharing its doorstep.
On the Environment Agency's modelled flood extents, about 27% of Wapping's postcodes are in the high-probability extent with no defence recorded, and none are in the high-probability extent with a defence recorded. About 34% are in the low-probability extent without one. Even where the model does record a defence, it only means something stands in the way, and nothing about how well it holds. The Environment Agency's records show nine past floods, the most recent in January 1928, when the main river overtopped its defences. Wapping already has one recorded flood where the defences were there and the water went over them anyway.
The nearest tide gauge with a long record is at Portsmouth, where the sea rose by about 2 millimetres a year between 1962 and 2023. That rate was measured on the south coast, a long way downstream of the Thames at Wapping, and it is a historic rate rather than a prediction for this stretch of river.
Flood risk is where Wapping looks worst, with about half the area in the top zone and a history of the Thames getting over the wall. The upper floors are mostly fine. The ground floor is where the risk is.