Wood Green is at real risk of flooding, but almost none of it comes from a river or the sea. Rivers barely feature. The sea is nowhere near. Nearly a third of postcodes still carry a high reading on at least one flood measure. That leaves the rain, and in a district this built-up, rain has fewer places to go.
The Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones cover very little of Wood Green. About 0.3% of the area's postcodes are in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band, and a further 0.1% sit in flood zone 2, the medium-probability fringe beyond it. Both round to nothing. Of the 184 properties the Agency lists for river-and-sea risk, none is rated high, medium or low, and 63 are rated very low. The New River was built through Wood Green in the early seventeenth century and made the place fashionable, and it has caused this district no trouble on the official maps since.
With rivers and sea close to absent, the risk the wider indicators pick up comes overwhelmingly from surface water: heavy rain landing on roofs, roads and paved-over front gardens faster than the drains can take it. That kind of flooding is patchy, decided by a dip in the road or which side of the street drains first, and two houses on the same terrace can sit in different categories.
Allowing for climate change, the Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone covers about 0.4% of Wood Green's postcodes. Even the forward look leaves rivers and sea a footnote here.
For insurance, the surface-water readings are what an insurer will look at, and a high one can mean a higher premium, a larger excess or more questions. An insurer quoting on the full address will price the actual street, and the long-term flood risk check for that address, with its surface-water layer switched on, is the one worth reading before a survey gets booked.
Counting postcodes that rate high on at least one of several flood measures, surface water included alongside rivers and sea, about 30% of Wood Green's postcodes rate high, a further 22% medium and 29% low. Those shares sit on a different measure from the flood zones above, which is why they look so much worse. The zones ask about rivers and sea. This count asks about everything, and the rain is what lifts it.
On defences, the question barely arises. In the Environment Agency's modelled flood extents, 0% of postcodes fall inside the high-probability extent with defences in the model and 0% without them; about 0.4% fall in the low-probability extent with no defence modelled. There is no river flood here for a wall to hold back, and no wall in the model would stop a downpour pooling at the bottom of a street.
The nearest tide gauge is at Portsmouth, where sea level rose by about 2 millimetres a year over its record from 1962 to 2023. That is the rate measured at Portsmouth over those years, a long way from a north London high road, and it is here as background only.
No historic flood outline on record covers Wood Green. That is a fair comfort as far as rivers and sea go, though surface-water flooding often goes unrecorded at street level, so a clean history does not prove a dry one.
Flood risk is Wood Green's weak spot, and the cause is rain on hard ground, not rivers. A buyer here should expect the insurer to look closely at the street.