Flood Zones in Aransas County, Texas

A direct, numbered hit: Hurricane Harvey, August 25, 2017

Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 storm just south of Rockport on August 25, 2017 -- not a glancing blow from a storm that hit elsewhere, but a direct hit on Aransas County itself. The damage was severe and specific: 45% of Rockport's land area flooded, and county-wide damage exceeded $800 million. The area's low, flat topography made that flooding especially consequential -- Rockport's roughly 16.8 square miles sit at only about seven feet above sea level on average, leaving little natural buffer against storm surge.

The human and economic aftermath was also significant and lasting: the county's pre-Harvey population declined by nearly 20% in the years following the storm, driven largely by displacement of lower-income households, since affordable rental housing was both hit hard and proved less profitable to rebuild than higher-end property. The county produced both a Multi-Jurisdictional Floodplain Management Plan (2017) and a Long-Term Recovery Plan in the years after the storm -- real, adopted planning documents that reflect the county's own post-Harvey floodplain analysis, not just outside reporting.

What Rockport's floodplain percentages mean for a buyer

Roughly 17% of Rockport's land area sits within the FEMA 100-year floodplain, and an additional 10% sits within the 500-year floodplain -- together putting more than a quarter of the city's land inside one flood-hazard designation or another. That's a meaningfully higher share than a typical inland Texas town, and it's the direct, quantified consequence of the low elevation and coastal exposure Harvey demonstrated so starkly in 2017. For land anywhere in Aransas County, and especially near Copano Bay, Aransas Bay, or the Gulf shoreline, checking the current FEMA flood map designation for a specific parcel is not a formality -- it's a real determinant of insurance cost, financing requirements, and buildable elevation.

It's also worth noting that FEMA flood maps are periodically revised, and a county that absorbed a storm as significant as Harvey is a reasonable candidate for map updates reflecting post-storm data. Don't rely on a pre-2017 flood map or an outdated online flood-zone lookup tool for a purchase decision here -- pull the current effective FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) for the specific parcel, and ask the county's floodplain administrator directly whether a map revision affecting that parcel has occurred or is pending.

What to check before buying

1. Pull the current effective FEMA flood map for the specific parcel rather than relying on a pre-Harvey map or a generic online estimate.
2. Ask the county floodplain administrator whether the parcel is inside the 100-year or 500-year floodplain, and what elevation-certificate or base-flood-elevation requirements apply to new construction there.
3. Confirm current flood-insurance cost estimates for the specific parcel and structure type before finalizing a purchase, since Harvey's aftermath has kept coastal Aransas County insurance costs a live and material budgeting item.
4. If the tract is near the coast, check both the flood-zone status and, separately, whether it falls within Aransas County's Subchapter N coastal zoning band (see this site's zoning page for Aransas County) -- the two are related but distinct legal questions.