Baltimore City, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

Baltimore City has the highest risk score in Maryland, 95, even though Baltimore County expects larger losses. FEMA weights the city's $136.3 million in expected annual losses for its relatively high social vulnerability, and heat is where the two meet: heat waves make up 28% of the city's losses, a larger share than in any other Maryland jurisdiction.

What drives the risk

Inland flooding still leads, at $52.4 million a year. FEMA's model counts rain that overwhelms drainage as well as overflowing streams, and the city has both. FEMA's flood study for Baltimore notes that the Jones Falls runs through an underground storm sewer from North Avenue to the harbor that can't carry major floods, so nearby streets flood in heavy rain.

Heat is the city's distinctive risk. On August 29, 2018, NOAA-funded heat mapping recorded 103°F in some neighborhoods, 16 degrees hotter than the coolest parts of the city. FEMA counts heat losses almost entirely as harm to people, so people carry nearly half of Baltimore's expected losses, the highest share in the state. In the 2025 heat season, Baltimore City recorded 8 of Maryland's 34 heat-related deaths, the most of any jurisdiction.

Where the mitigation money has gone

For most of two decades, the money went into backup power. A dozen generator grants came in fiscal 2012, and $1.7 million for generators and other equipment came through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program attached to Maryland's COVID-19 declaration (DR-4491).

The largest grant points somewhere else. FEMA selected the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership's Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative for $31.9 million under the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, for living shorelines and restored wetlands along the Patapsco's Middle Branch, and $5.2 million of it is obligated so far. That is a coastal project in a city where FEMA's model puts coastal flooding at less than 1% of expected losses. Two more grants from the same program in fiscal 2022, $603 thousand and $528 thousand, pay for design work on flooding at Frederick Avenue and at 35th Street and Hillen Road.

In all, FEMA has funded 22 mitigation projects in the city since fiscal 2004, worth $9.1 million in federal share so far: 6% of Maryland's mitigation grant money, for a city that carries 13% of the state's expected losses. None of the project types on record addresses heat.

The mitigation plan

Baltimore doesn't keep a standalone hazard mitigation plan. Its Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project, or DP3, combines hazard mitigation and climate adaptation in one document. The Sustainability Commission and the Planning Commission adopted the 2023 update on November 29 and 30, 2023, and FEMA's approval runs through November 29, 2028. The city needs an approved update by then to stay eligible for FEMA mitigation grants.

What we'd look at next

Baltimore's grants have turned toward water, with Middle Branch on the shoreline and two design grants for neighborhoods that flood in heavy rain. None addresses heat, which is where the city's vulnerability shows. We'd build a short list of projects that cut both, such as green stormwater infrastructure that shades the hottest blocks, drawn from the DP3 and designed and costed before the next disaster declaration opens post-disaster mitigation money.