List of floods in the Netherlands

Last updated November 10, 2022

This is a chronological list of sea-floods that have occurred in the Netherlands. In addition to these there have been hundreds of river floods during the centuries.

Name	Date	Place	Deaths	Details
	838	Northwest of the Netherlands (part of Friesland)	2,437	A large part of the northwest of the Netherlands (in that time the land belonged to Frisia – now called Friesland) was flooded by a storm. Lack of good dikes was an important cause of this flood disaster. This flood is also described in the Annales Xantenses .
	1014		Thousands	For the first time the partially closed coast line of the Netherlands was breached. Walcheren suffered a particularly large amount of damage. It took years before people managed to get their lives back on track. The chronicle of the Quedlinburg abbey in Saxony
	1042	Flemish coast and in particular the region of the Yser mouth.		Flood mentioned in Annales Blandiniensis (Ghent).
	1163			The Netherlands experienced several floods this year. This caused dike breaches along the Maas. As a result the mouth of the Oude Rijn at Katwijk, which was already almost entirely silted up, was entirely closed by sediment carried around by the flood.
All Saints' flood	1170	North Sea, Zuiderzee and Waddenzee.		Large parts of the north of the Netherlands and the Zuiderzee region were inundated. A channel from the North Sea was opened into the fresh water Lake Flavo (Almere lake), and it became the salt water Zuiderzee. Two factors causing this sea enlargement were important: first was the sea area increase, second the presence of large peat areas, which were easily washed away.
St. Nicholas' Flood(nl) (Sint-Nicolaasvloed)	1196	Large parts of the north of the Netherlands and the Zuiderzee region were inundated.		Where the storm flood of 1170 made a beginning, this storm worsened it, washing away large peat areas. The result of this storm was destruction of peat areas in West Friesland and enlarging the Waddenzee and the Almere which became the Zuiderzee.
	1212	North Holland	60,000
	1214			Storm flood affecting all parts of the Netherlands. Much erosion of peat areas.
St. Marcellus' Flood(nl) (Sint-Marcellusvloed).	1219	West Friesland and Groningen.	36,000	This was the 4th large flood in 50 years. This had enormous consequences on the development of the two large inner seas in the Netherlands, the Zuiderzee and the Waddenzee.
	1248 20 November, 28 December, and 4 February 1249	North Holland, Friesland and Groningen.		The coastal dunes were breached (possibly at Callantsoog), flooding parts of North Holland.
	1277	Reiderland
	1280	Large parts of the north of the Netherlands were inundated.		This flood created the Lauwerszee.
	1282	Waddenzee and IJsselmeer.		A storm broke through the coastal dunes around Texel sparking the cause of the flood.
St. Lucia's flood	1287		~50,000 to 80,000
Grote Mandrenke	1362	Netherlands, Schleswig, Jutland, England	at least 25,000	Hurricane-force winds drove enormous waves atop an incredible storm surge that carved a huge inland sea into the Netherlands. The salt sea swallowed sixty parishes in the Danish diocese of the bishops of Slesvig. This storm also demolished much infrastructure in England.
St. Elizabeth's flood	1404	Zeeland and Holland
St. Elizabeth's flood	1421	Zeeland and Holland	2,000 to 10,000
St. Felix's Flood	1530		100,000+	Large parts of Flanders and Zeeland were washed away, including the Verdronken Land van Reimerswaal. According to Audrey M. Lambert, "all the Oost Wetering of Zuid-Beveland was lost, save only the town of Reimerswaal."
All Saints' flood	1570	Egmond, Bergen Op Zoom, and Saeftinghe	20,000
	1675	North Netherlands
Great Storm of 1703	1703	Friesland	8,000 to 15,000	This storm caused a flood killing thousands of victims. There are no wind measurements available, but a wealth of reports and diaries make it clear that this storm was extremely serious. The storm reached its peak in the night and led to enormous damage and numerous dike breaches. It was heaviest in an area of approximately 500 kilometres wide in Wales, central and southern England, the North Sea, the Low Countries, and the north of Germany. At many places there was talk of a high storm surge. Seamen reported tornadoes. Other sources wrote about a terrible storm and these well agree with each other. The air was full of lightning. The English journalist and writer Daniel Defoe (the writer of Robinson Crusoe) wrote concerning the "most terrible storm which the world ever saw". The storm was according to Defoe so dreadful that there was no pen to describe it. There had already been a storm for two weeks, but this was the peak. The south of Friesland was flooded from several dike breaches. A Zeelandish captain wrote in a letter to the admiralty of Zeeland that the storm could not be withstood. The Dutch fleet was hit hard, but the British fleet bore the heaviest blows. Dozens of war ships sailed to the English coasts where thousands of victims died. Meteorologists have tried to reconstruct the chart of this storm. Above Scandinavia the air pressure was high at the beginning of December 1703, but in the Bay of Biscay south west of the United Kingdom there were two depressions. The first depression went up the North Sea, the second went to Scotland. The venom, however, was in a new block which appeared at Ireland. This increasingly drew in strong activity around the middle and from Britain further to the east. The storm blew on the south side of the depression where the south of Britain had a hurricane, wind strength 12. The barometers plummeted dramatically: according to calculations the air pressure must have decreased to 950 millibars, a rare low for Britain. A powerful anticyclone which came immediately ensured enormous air pressure differences, as a result of which it blew terribly this way.
Christmas flood of 1717	1717	Groningen, Zwolle, Dokkum, Amsterdam, and Haarlem	14,000
	1820	Holland		This flood inundated large parts of the Alblasserwaard, after a number of dike breaches. Also the lock between the Linge and the canal from Steenenhoek to Gorinchem succumbed on 26 January during the events of this calamity. An area of approximately 1300 km² came under water during this calamity.
February flood of 1825	1825	Groningen, Friesland and Overijssel	800+	The provinces listed were flooded through serious dike breaks.
	1836	Leyden, and Amsterdam		Two hurricane-driven floods took place late in the year. One reached the gates of Amsterdam in November, while another one flooded Leyden on Christmas day. This flood prompted the draining of the Haarlemmermeer.
	1916	Northwest Netherlands		Dikes broke at dozens of places around the Zuiderzee
North Sea flood of 1953	1953	Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom	2,551

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Holland is a geographical region and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region within the Holy Roman Empire as a county ruled by the counts of Holland. By the 17th century, the province of Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the newly independent Dutch Republic.

The Meuse or Maas is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a total length of 925 km.

The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country located in Northwestern Europe with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium in the North Sea. The country's official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish are recognised regional languages, while Dutch Sign Language, Sinte Romani and Yiddish are recognised non-territorial languages. Dutch, English and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories.

A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually earthen and that often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines. The purpose of a levee is to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. Levees can be naturally occurring ridge structures that form next to the bank of a river, or be an artificially constructed fill or wall that regulates water levels. Ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China all built levees. Today, levees can be found around the world, and failures of levees due to erosion or other causes can be major disasters.

A polder is a low-lying tract of land that forms an artificial hydrological entity, enclosed by embankments known as dikes. The three types of polder are:

Land reclaimed from a body of water, such as a lake or the seabed
Flood plains separated from the sea or river by a dike
Marshes separated from the surrounding water by a dike and subsequently drained; these are also known as koogs, especially in Germany

A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrology and are of significant concern in agriculture, civil engineering and public health. Human changes to the environment often increase the intensity and frequency of flooding, for example land use changes such as deforestation and removal of wetlands, changes in waterway course or flood controls such as with levees, and larger environmental issues such as climate change and sea level rise. In particular climate change's increased rainfall and extreme weather events increases the severity of other causes for flooding, resulting in more intense floods and increased flood risk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zuiderzee</span> Former inland sea in the Netherlands, now the IJsselmeer

The Zuiderzee or Zuider Zee was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, extending about 100 km inland and at most 50 km wide, with an overall depth of about 4 to 5 metres (13–16 feet) and a coastline of about 300 km. It covered 5,000 km² (1,900 sq mi). Its name is Dutch for "southern sea", indicating that the name originates in Friesland, to the north of the Zuiderzee. In the 20th century the majority of the Zuiderzee was closed off from the North Sea by the construction of the Afsluitdijk, leaving the mouth of the inlet to become part of the Wadden Sea. The salt water inlet changed into a fresh water lake now called the IJsselmeer after the river that drains into it, and by means of drainage and polders, an area of some 1,500 km² (580 sq mi) was reclaimed as land. This land eventually became the province of Flevoland, with a population of nearly 400,000 (2011).

The Delta Works is a series of construction projects in the southwest of the Netherlands to protect a large area of land around the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta from the sea. Constructed between 1954 and 1997, the works consist of dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees, and storm surge barriers located in the provinces of South Holland and Zeeland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zuid-Beveland</span> Peninsula in Zeeland, Netherlands

Zuid-Beveland is part of the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands north of the Western Scheldt and south of the Eastern Scheldt.

Storm tides of the North Sea are coastal floods associated with extratropical cyclones crossing over the North Sea, the severity of which are affected by the shallowness of the sea and the orientation of the shoreline relative to the storm's path, as well as the timing of tides. The water level can rise to more than 5 metres (17 ft) above the normal tide as a result of storm tides.

Kinderdijk is a village in the municipality of Molenlanden, in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located about 15 km east of Rotterdam.

The 1953 North Sea flood was a major flood caused by a heavy storm at the end of Saturday, 31 January 1953 and morning of the next day. The storm surge struck the Netherlands, north-west Belgium, England and Scotland.

The Christmas Flood of 1717 was the result of a northwesterly storm, which hit the coast area of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia on Christmas night of 1717.

A levee breach or levee failure is a situation where a levee fails or is intentionally breached, causing the previously contained water to flood the land behind the levee.

Saint Marcellus's flood or Grote Mandrenke was an intense extratropical cyclone, coinciding with a new moon, which swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark around 16 January 1362 (OS), causing at least 25,000 deaths. The storm tide is also called the "Second St. Marcellus flood" because it peaked on 16 January, the feast day of St. Marcellus. A previous "First St. Marcellus flood" drowned 36,000 people along the coasts of West Friesland and Groningen on 16 January 1219.

A flood wall is a primarily vertical artificial barrier designed to temporarily contain the waters of a river or other waterway which may rise to unusual levels during seasonal or extreme weather events. Flood walls are mainly used on locations where space is scarce, such as cities or where building levees or dikes (dykes) would interfere with other interests, such as existing buildings, historical architecture or commercial use of embankments.

St. Lucia's flood (Sint-Luciavloed) was a storm tide that affected the Netherlands and Northern Germany on 13/14 December 1287 (OS), St. Lucia Day and the day after, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people in one of the largest floods in recorded history.

Flood control is an important issue for the Netherlands, as due to its low elevation, approximately two thirds of its area is vulnerable to flooding, while the country is densely populated. Natural sand dunes and constructed dikes, dams, and floodgates provide defense against storm surges from the sea. River dikes prevent flooding from water flowing into the country by the major rivers Rhine and Meuse, while a complicated system of drainage ditches, canals, and pumping stations keep the low-lying parts dry for habitation and agriculture. Water control boards are the independent local government bodies responsible for maintaining this system.

In the Netherlands, a water board, water council or water authority is a regional governing body solely charged with the management of surface water in the environment. Water boards are independent of administrative governing bodies like provinces and municipalities. In general, they are responsible for managing rivers and canals, issues with the flow of watercourses and drainage issues, water collection, flood and erosion prevention and provision of potable water. They manage polder systems, water levels, water barriers and locks, enforcements, water quality and sewage treatment in their respective regions. The concept of a coordinating "High Water Authority" (Hoogheemraadschap) originated in what now is the province of South Holland in the 12th century.

Flood control methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters. Flood relief methods are used to reduce the effects of flood waters or high water levels. Flooding can be caused by a mix of both natural processes, such as extreme weather upstream, and human changes to waterbodies and runoff. Though building hard infrastructure to prevent flooding, such as flood walls, can be effective at managing flooding, increased best practice within landscape engineering is to rely more on soft infrastructure and natural systems, such as marshes and flood plains, for handling the increase in water. For flooding on coasts, coastal management practices have to not only handle changes water flow, but also natural processes like tides.

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List of floods in the Netherlands

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