For many Missouri homeowners, flood risk has always seemed fairly easy to identify. We know the rivers and creeks that rise, the roads that tend to go under after prolonged rain, and the low-lying fields and neighborhoods that have historically dealt with high water. If a home has never been among them, particularly if it sits outside a designated high-risk flood area, flood insurance may never have seemed like something worth considering. After repeated episodes of extremely heavy rainfall across Missouri, however, including flash flooding in communities where residents may not traditionally think of themselves as living in a flood-prone area, there is a reasonable question more homeowners are beginning to ask: Could my property be at risk even if it has never flooded before? The answer isn't automatically yes, but it isn't automatically no, either. Flood risk is more complicated than a line on a map, and several of the factors affecting that risk are changing. Missouri Is Seeing More Extreme Rainfall Heavy rain and flooding are certainly nothing new in Missouri. Our location, extensive river systems, and weather patterns have made flooding part of the state's history for generations. What has changed is the intensity of some of that rainfall. According to NOAA's Missouri State Climate Summary, the state has experienced an increase in extreme precipitation events. Missouri's current State Hazard Mitigation Plan provides additional context, noting that rainfall during the four wettest days of the year has increased by approximately 35 percent over the last half century, while the amount of water flowing in most streams during the worst flood of the year has increased by more than 20 percent. The state's mitigation plan also acknowledges what that could mean going forward: if increases in precipitation intensity continue, the frequency of flooding in Missouri is likely to...