Hull, MA Coastal Insurance: Flood Risk Guide

Hull's Geography: 2.8 Square Miles of Land, 89.6 Percent Water

Per the town's own geographic data, Hull's total area is 26.9 square miles, and only 2.8 of those are land. The remaining 24.1 square miles, 89.6 percent of the town, is water, drawn from both Boston Harbor and the open Atlantic along the many named coves, guts, and harbors that wrap the peninsula. That water share is dramatically higher than any of this site's neighboring South Shore towns, including Cohasset's already-notable 68.9 percent, and it is the single most important fact to understand about why flood insurance is not an optional consideration here.

Hull occupies the Nantasket Peninsula, a narrow, hook-shaped spit forming the southern entrance to Boston Harbor, made up of a chain of glacial drumlins connected by narrow necks of land. A build agent or homeowner should picture the town less as a conventional coastal suburb and more as a long, thin finger of land with water pressing in from nearly every side, a description that shows up again and again in the flood-zone and repetitive-loss data below.

Even taking conservative population figures, Hull's roughly 10,000-plus year-round residents living on only 2.8 square miles of land make it one of the most densely populated small coastal towns in Massachusetts on a per-land-square-mile basis. Dense development on a narrow, low-lying, flood-exposed peninsula is exactly the combination that produces the kind of repetitive-loss record documented in the next section.

FEMA Flood Zones and Hull's Repetitive-Loss Record

Hull's own 2024 hazard-mitigation plan update, prepared for the town by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, documents FEMA flood-zone designations of AO, AE, A1 through A30, X500, and VE applying somewhere within the town. Those cover the full range FEMA uses along a coastline like Hull's: AE and A1-A30 zones reflect areas with a 1 percent annual chance of flooding, the standard 100-year floodplain that carries a federal flood-insurance purchase requirement for federally backed mortgages; VE zones add high-velocity wave action on top of that same flood risk, typically the most expensive zone to insure; AO zones reflect shallow, sheet-flow flooding rather than deep standing water; and X500 marks the 500-year, 0.2 percent annual chance floodplain, lower risk but still mapped.

The same plan reports 295 total FEMA-tracked repetitive-loss properties in Hull: 261 classified as standard Repetitive Loss and 34 as Severe Repetitive Loss, with combined historical claims exceeding 16.5 million dollars since 1978. That is a genuinely large repetitive-loss count for a town with only 2.8 square miles of land, and it reflects real, repeated flood-insurance claims activity rather than a theoretical exposure. Anyone evaluating a specific Hull property should treat a history of repeat flood claims on that parcel, or on ones near it, as a serious pricing and insurability signal, not a coincidence.

None of this substitutes for a parcel-specific flood-zone determination. FEMA's zone boundaries are drawn at a granular, street-by-street and sometimes lot-by-lot level, and this page cannot tell you which specific zone applies to a specific address. The only reliable way to get that answer is a direct lookup through FEMA's own Map Service Center, covered again in the final section below.

Community Rating System: Confirmed Participation, Unconfirmed Class

Hull's hazard-mitigation plan references a 2017 repetitive-loss analysis tied to FEMA's Community Rating System, confirming that Hull participates in the program. The Community Rating System, or CRS, is the FEMA program that ties a community's floodplain-management practices, things like stricter building codes, public outreach, and drainage-system maintenance, to an automatic discount on National Flood Insurance Program premiums for every policyholder in that town, with the discount size set by the town's assigned CRS class.

What this research did not confirm is Hull's specific, current CRS class number. That number matters directly: it determines the size of the discount every NFIP policyholder in Hull actually receives, and it can change over time as the town's floodplain-management practices are reviewed. Do not assume Hull shares any neighboring town's confirmed class, and do not assume a specific class based on Hull's town size or storm history. A build agent or homeowner who needs Hull's actual current class should check FEMA's own Community Rating System community list directly, or ask a Massachusetts-licensed agent to pull it as part of a quote.

Storm History: March 2010, January 2018, and Earlier Named Events

Hull's hazard-mitigation plan identifies the March 2010 flooding as the single most damaging recent flood event on record for the region: 17.7 inches of rain fell over 19 days, from March 13 through 31, 2010, causing 24.2 million dollars in Plymouth County damages, representing 93 percent of the county's entire flood-damage total for the 2005 through 2023 period the plan covers. That single event dwarfs every other flood loss recorded for the county across nearly two decades.

A January 4, 2018 nor'easter produced a storm surge of 15.16 feet at Hull, described in the town's own plan as higher than the highest surge recorded during the Blizzard of 1978, a storm still used regionally as a benchmark for severe coastal flooding. The same plan separately documents Hurricane Bob in August 1991 and a second, unnamed "No-Name Storm" in October 1991 as dated, sourced storm events affecting Hull specifically, along with additional blizzards in December 1992, March 1993, January 1996, and January 2005, and flood events in October 1996 and June 1998 without extracted damage-dollar specifics.

This page did not find a Hull-specific damage account for the 1898 Portland Gale distinct from the regional facts already documented for other South Shore towns in this cluster. As a low-lying, harbor-mouth peninsula, Hull plausibly experienced serious impacts from that storm, but this should be treated as a reasonable inference rather than a confirmed, sourced figure.

Active Seawall and Shoreline-Protection Projects

Hull is not simply exposed, it is actively investing in adaptation, and the clearest example is the Crescent Beach and Atlantic Avenue project. Crescent Beach, a quarter-mile barrier beach on Hull's northeast-facing shore, had a deteriorating revetment and seawall threatening 73 homes, a critical evacuation route, and Straits Pond. The town's chosen strategy raised the seawall's top by two feet and reconstructed the revetment with armor stone to reduce wave-energy overtopping. Funding came in two stages: an initial FY2014 Coastal Resilience Grant of 41,250 dollars with a 13,750-dollar local match, followed by a further 3 million dollars awarded in 2015 through the Massachusetts Dam and Seawall Repair or Removal Program covering final design, permitting, and construction. A notable engineering finding from that project: accommodating just one additional foot of sea-level rise would have required raising the seawall four feet, adding roughly 35 percent to project cost, which is part of why Hull chose a balanced approach that reduces, rather than eliminates, wave overtopping.

A second, live project is tied to a 2026 federal funding round: FEMA's own June 22, 2026 press release names Hull as eligible for 1.1 million dollars to repair and enhance shoreline protection along Harborview Road, addressing coastal erosion, under a program that made 17 million dollars available across New England. As of this research, in mid-2026, this is an application, not an awarded or completed grant, and the application deadline was July 22, 2026. Anyone weighing a property near Harborview Road should check the Town of Hull's own site for the project's current status before assuming construction is underway.

A third project, seawall replacement at Stony Beach reportedly carrying an 11 million dollar figure with work scheduled around December 2024, appeared in search results referencing a state dam-and-seawall funding round, but this research could not independently confirm that specific dollar figure and timeline through a fully successful direct fetch of the underlying press release. Treat the Stony Beach figure as reported, not fully verified, and separately confirm it before citing it as settled. Two additional named, town-tracked project pages, a Nantasket Avenue Seawall Project and a 2024 Cadish Avenue Shoreline Stabilization Project, were confirmed to exist but not confirmed for funding or scope detail in this research.

Fourteen Flood-Hazard Areas Hull Has Identified

Hull's own hazard-mitigation plan identifies at least 14 locally recognized flood-hazard and seawall-need areas across the peninsula, including Atlantic Avenue, Nantasket Beach, Stony Beach, Point Allerton, and various "alphabet streets" on the ocean side of town. That is a genuinely long list for a town with only 2.8 square miles of land, and it reflects how much of Hull's built environment sits directly against exposed water on more than one side.

This page does not have the full, itemized list of all 14 areas with individual detail, only the plan's own named examples above. Anyone considering a property in or near any of these areas, or elsewhere on the peninsula, should ask directly whether that specific street or neighborhood appears in the town's current hazard-mitigation plan and what mitigation work, if any, is planned or underway there.

Wind Versus Flood: Two Different Insurance Questions

Standard Massachusetts homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, and that split matters enormously in a town where 89.6 percent of the land area is water. Wind damage, a tree limb through a roof, shingles peeled off in a nor'easter, is ordinarily a homeowners-policy question. Storm-driven water intrusion, the kind a 15.16-foot storm surge or a multi-week rain event like March 2010 produces, is a flood question, handled through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood policy, not a standard homeowners form.

This page has not confirmed, and will not invent, any Hull-specific windstorm or named-storm deductible structure, any insurer's name doing business in town, or a specific premium figure for either wind or flood coverage on any given property. Coastal Massachusetts carriers commonly layer their own separate wind or named-storm deductible provisions on top of a standard policy, and how a given carrier defines and triggers that deductible varies by policy and by insurer. Ask a current, Massachusetts-licensed agent exactly how a specific carrier structures both wind and flood coverage for the parcel you are considering, especially given Hull's documented repetitive-loss history, rather than assuming a figure that applied somewhere else on the South Shore applies here.

Before You Budget an Insurance Number

This page has not priced a policy for any Hull property. It has also not confirmed Hull's current Community Rating System class, any specific NFIP premium figure, any windstorm-deductible structure, or any insurer name, and none of those are stated here as if they were known. What is confirmed is a genuinely extreme, water-dominated peninsula geography, a documented 295-property repetitive-loss record exceeding 16.5 million dollars in claims since 1978, a specific and dated storm history including a 15.16-foot 2018 surge and a 24.2-million-dollar 2010 flood event, and real, dollar-specific adaptation work already completed at Crescent Beach and Atlantic Avenue, plus a pending 2026 federal application for Harborview Road.

Two concrete next steps will actually answer the question this page cannot: look up the specific parcel's flood zone directly through FEMA's Map Service Center, and get a written quote from a Massachusetts-licensed insurance agent who can price that exact parcel under current flood maps, current CRS class, and current underwriting rules. Do not rely on a neighboring town's CRS class, zone framing, or premium as a stand-in for Hull's own figures, and do not assume Hull's specific class matches any other town's confirmed rating; that number was not confirmed in the research behind this page. This page is independent research and general information, not insurance, legal, or financial advice; confirm every figure with a licensed Massachusetts insurance agent, and where relevant a financial advisor, before making a purchase decision.