From the high-rise oceanfront condominiums at Galt Ocean Mile down through the Hollywood Beach broadwalk, inland through Sunrise and Plantation, and west to the Everglades line at Weston — Broward County is one continuous High Velocity Hurricane Zone parcel. WindLoadCalc has been calculating Broward wind loads online since the year ASCE 7-02 was published. SkyCiv (founded 2013) treats Broward as a checkbox under "Florida." We've been tracking the FI bulletin stream out of the Broward Building Code Services Division for 24 years.

That history is the calculator. Every Broward interpretive memo from FI-01 through the current FI-24 has shaped how WindLoadCalc handles the 170 mph county floor, the cross-acceptance of Miami-Dade NOAs, the four-enclosure post-2022 reclassification of screened lanais, and the four-foot edge strip Broward reviewers expect on every C&C zone diagram. Enter any Broward ZIP and the calculator opens with 170 mph locked, the HVHZ flag set, and the 8th Edition / FI-24 conventions applied.

Broward HVHZ is not Miami-Dade HVHZ — three concrete deltas

Both are HVHZ; the resemblance ends at the abbreviation. Broward holds at 170 mph for Risk Cat II while Miami-Dade sits 5 mph higher at 175 mph (an 11% pressure spread once it cubes through the velocity equation). Broward delegates plan review out to its 31 incorporated cities under the umbrella authority of the Broward County Building Code Services Division; Miami-Dade keeps unincorporated review centralized through RER. And the bulletin trails diverge: Broward publishes its own FI series, Miami-Dade issues its own interpretive memos, and the two are not word-for-word identical on inspection sequencing or FL# acceptance.

Broward Wind Speed Quick Reference — All 31 Municipalities at 170 mph

Because the HVHZ boundary follows the county line, every Broward ZIP returns the same 170 mph Risk Cat II floor — there is no inland exception. What actually changes from one Broward address to the next is exposure category (D on A1A, C in the typical suburban core, B only inside dense urban or mature canopy), the satellite municipal building department issuing the permit, and the specific FI-24 transition handling if your design predates 8th Edition adoption. The representative cities below show the geographic spread:

City / ZIP Risk Cat II Wind Speed Broward-specific note
Fort Lauderdale (33301) HVHZ 170 mph A1A barrier-island parcels — Exposure D within ~1 mi of the Atlantic
Hollywood (33020) HVHZ 170 mph Beach broadwalk district; Hollywood municipal building department reviews
Pompano Beach (33060) HVHZ 170 mph Atlantic high-rise corridor — many 4+ story buildings outside WLC PE scope
Hallandale Beach (33009) HVHZ 170 mph Southernmost coastal Broward, abuts the Miami-Dade line at NE 215th St
Coral Springs (33071) HVHZ 170 mph Northwest Broward suburb; Exposure C typical, HVHZ still applies inland
Pembroke Pines (33028) HVHZ 170 mph Southwest Broward along the Miami-Dade line; full HVHZ jurisdiction
Weston (33326) HVHZ 170 mph Westernmost incorporated Broward, backed up against the Everglades — still HVHZ
Sunrise (33323) HVHZ 170 mph Central Broward, FLA Live Arena vicinity — assembly facility Cat III scaling applies

170 mph is the floor — Risk Category III and IV go higher

Broward's 170 mph is the Risk Cat II baseline. Schools, large-occupancy assembly buildings (FLA Live, BB&T-era and current event venues), and most hotels above the occupancy threshold scale to Risk Cat III with a higher derived wind speed. Risk Cat IV picks up Memorial Healthcare's hospitals, Holy Cross, Broward Health, the Broward EOC, fire stations, and any essential facility that must stay operational the morning after a storm — those scale higher still. Run the calculator with the correct category; the 170 mph headline number is not the answer for III or IV.

What HVHZ Actually Demands Inside Broward

The HVHZ provisions trace back to the post-Andrew code reforms of the mid-1990s and are written into the Florida Building Code itself. Inside Broward — meaning every parcel from Hillsboro Inlet at the north county line down to Hallandale Beach at the Miami-Dade line, and from the Atlantic west to the Everglades — four operational realities apply that don't apply in the other 65 Florida counties:

The receipts: every Broward FI bulletin from FI-01 to FI-24, tracked and built in

Florida Building Information bulletins are how the code authorities clarify Broward-specific application of the FBC. WindLoadCalc has been online and operating in Broward since 2002 — meaning we've ingested every FI bulletin from FI-01 forward as it published. The current bulletin governing 8th Edition (2023) application in Broward is FI-24, covering 7th-to-8th transition rules, HVHZ amendment clarifications, and the four-enclosure post-ASCE 7-22 reclassification (Enclosed, Partially Open, Partially Enclosed, Open). Generalist tools published after 2013 simply don't have this chain of institutional memory. We do.

FBC 8th Edition (2023) + ASCE 7-22 — How FI-24 Maps the Transition in Broward

The Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023) became effective statewide on December 31, 2024, replacing the 7th Edition (2020) and pulling the underlying wind standard forward from ASCE 7-16 to ASCE 7-22. In Broward, the operational interpretive layer is FI-24, the current FI bulletin Broward Building Code Services Division references when reviewers evaluate 8th Edition submittals. FI-24 sits at the head of a continuous chain that goes back to FI-01 — every one of which WindLoadCalc has tracked since 2002.

The substantive changes from 7th Edition / ASCE 7-16 to 8th Edition / ASCE 7-22 that actually move numbers on a Broward report:

For a Broward permit pulled in 2026, the wind load report needs to cite ASCE 7-22, FBC 8th Edition, and (for transition-state projects) FI-24. WindLoadCalc emits all three on the report header automatically. If a Broward project was designed under 7th Edition / ASCE 7-16 but the permit application is landing now, FI-24 is the document the reviewer will turn to when deciding whether the prior submittal stands or needs an 8th Edition refresh.

Broward in the Florida HVHZ Landscape — Where the 170 mph Sits Relative to Neighbors

Broward is the second of Florida's two HVHZ counties — wedged between Miami-Dade to the south and Palm Beach to the north, with Collier sitting directly across the peninsula on the Gulf side. Each of the four runs its own jurisdictional logic. The grid below shows where Broward sits in the regional picture:

Miami-Dade County HVHZ

175 mph

Directly south of Broward across NE 215th Street at Hallandale. Same HVHZ regime but 5 mph higher floor; centralized plan review via RER. The Miami-Dade NOA is the document Broward accepts on every opening.

Broward County HVHZ

170 mph

This page. Entire county HVHZ at 170 mph. Plan review distributed across 31 municipalities under the umbrella authority of the Broward Building Code Services Division. FI-24 governs the current 8th Edition application.

Palm Beach County

165–170 mph

Directly north of Broward across the Hillsboro Inlet line. NOT HVHZ — Florida statewide Product Approval (FL#) applies rather than HVHZ-specific NOA. Coastal ZIPs at top of range, inland lower.

Collier County

170 mph

Gulf coast across the peninsula (Naples, Marco Island). Same 170 mph speed as Broward but NOT HVHZ — Florida statewide approval applies. Often the SW Florida comparable when sourcing products for a Broward project.

The cleanest sourcing path for any Broward project is to specify HVHZ-rated assemblies — those are accepted countywide in Broward and also satisfy every other Florida jurisdiction. The reverse is not true: a non-HVHZ Florida Product Approval will not cover a Broward opening even when the listed pressure rating exceeds your calculated demand, because the missing element is the TAS 201/202/203 testing chain, not the pressure number.

The Broward Building Code Services Division — and the 31 municipalities

The Building Code Services Division at the county level is the umbrella authority: it publishes the FI bulletins, the Broward-specific amendments to the statewide FBC, the inspector field directives, and serves as the appeal venue when a municipal denial is contested. The actual day-to-day plan review and permit issuance, though, happens at the municipal level — each of Broward's 31 incorporated cities (Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Coral Springs, Pembroke Pines, Plantation, Davie, Sunrise, Weston, Hallandale Beach, Deerfield Beach, Tamarac, Margate, North Lauderdale, Oakland Park, Wilton Manors, Lauderhill, Lauderdale Lakes, Cooper City, Miramar, Pembroke Park, West Park, Dania Beach, Lazy Lake, Sea Ranch Lakes, Lighthouse Point, Hillsboro Beach, Parkland, Southwest Ranches, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and Coconut Creek) runs its own building department under delegated county authority. Always confirm the specific submittal package with the municipality where the project sits — Fort Lauderdale's intake differs from Hollywood's differs from unincorporated Broward — but the underlying code and the wind load math are the same county-wide.

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How to Run a Broward Wind Load Calculation in WindLoadCalc

Type your Broward ZIP — auto-locks 170 mph + HVHZ flag

Any Broward ZIP — 33301 downtown Fort Lauderdale, 33019 Hollywood Beach, 33060 Pompano, 33009 Hallandale, 33071 Coral Springs, 33028 Pembroke Pines, 33326 Weston, 33323 Sunrise, and the rest of the 31-municipality set — auto-populates 170 mph and sets the HVHZ flag the moment you submit. The county, the administering authority (Broward Building Code Services Division), and the municipal-level building department all populate the report header so the attribution matches the actual permit jurisdiction.

Risk Category — what each tier maps to in Broward's permit mix

Risk Category II picks up the single-family residences in Coral Springs, the rental condos along A1A, the strip retail in Davie, and the office mid-rises in Sunrise. Cat III bumps the speed for the schools (Broward County Public Schools), the FLA Live Arena-type assembly buildings, and the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood hotels above the 300-occupant threshold. Cat IV is Memorial Healthcare, Holy Cross, Broward Health, the fire stations, the EOCs — anything that must stay operational the morning after. Each tier scales the 170 mph baseline up.

Exposure Category — Broward has all three, often within the same ZIP

Exposure D applies on beachfront parcels within roughly a mile of the open Atlantic — A1A frontage in Fort Lauderdale Beach, Pompano Beach, Hollywood Beach, Deerfield Beach. Exposure C is the default for most suburban Broward — Coral Springs, Plantation, most of Pembroke Pines, Sunrise, Davie. Exposure B applies only when surrounded on all sides by densely-packed buildings or mature tree canopy for 1500 ft upwind — uncommon outside dense urban pockets of Fort Lauderdale and parts of Hollywood. Punch in the building footprint, mean roof height, roof pitch as X-in-12, and roof type; the calculator handles every common Broward residential shape (gable, hip, monoslope) and the flat-roof commercial cases.

Review the pressures — Zone 5 corner governs in Broward almost every time

Zone 5 corner gets flagged first because in Broward HVHZ work it almost always wins — every NOA-rated product spec defaults to that worst-case pressure. The wall-field (Zone 4) and roof-edge cells follow, with Coral Springs single-family roofs reading lower edge pressures than Hollywood Beach high-rise corners. MWFRS pressures for the lateral system come alongside (the 170 mph drives a substantial Zone B/D corner pressure on any building over 30 ft mean roof height). The four-foot Florida edge strip is applied automatically per FBC R301.2(7).

FL# each opening, export the report, request a PE seal if the project is ≤3 stories

Cross-reference each calculated pressure against an HVHZ-compliant FL# (the underlying NOA must show TAS 201/202/203 results at or above your zone pressure). Export the report as PDF, Excel, or the architectural-schedule .xlsx that drops straight into AutoCAD. For Broward residential and small commercial up to three stories, request the in-house WindLoadCalc PE sign-and-seal (Florida licensed, ≤3 stories). For the Fort Lauderdale beachfront high-rises, the Galt Ocean Mile towers, the Pompano oceanfront hotels, the Hollywood Beach mid-rises, and any 4+ story Broward project, the WindLoadCalc output is fully adoptable into your project's structural engineer of record's stamped package as the wind analysis underpinning — but the seal itself comes from them.

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Broward Wind Load FAQ — Built on 24 Years of FI Bulletin Tracking

Why use WindLoadCalc for Broward instead of a generalist wind load tool?
Because Broward is not a generalist county. It's one of two HVHZ jurisdictions in the United States, administered by the Broward County Building Code Services Division with its own running series of FI bulletins (currently FI-24, governing 8th Edition / 2023 application). WindLoadCalc has tracked every one of those bulletins since FI-01 — 24 years of accumulated Broward-specific interpretive knowledge built into how the calculator treats 170 mph, exposure on A1A barrier-island parcels, the four enclosure types post-ASCE 7-22, and the Miami-Dade NOA cross-acceptance into Broward. A generalist tool like SkyCiv (founded 2013) treats Broward as a checkbox under "Florida." Our firm has been engineering Broward wind loads since 2002, and the online calculator has been running on the web since 2006 — 7 years online before SkyCiv was founded. On a Fort Lauderdale plan reviewer's desk, that history is the difference between a same-day approval and a list of comments.
Is every part of Broward in the HVHZ, including inland cities like Coral Springs or Weston?
Yes — the entire county. The HVHZ boundary follows the Broward county line, not the coastline. So Coral Springs in the northwest, Weston backed up against the Everglades, Pembroke Pines along the Miami-Dade border, Sunrise in the middle — every parcel inside the 31 Broward municipalities and unincorporated Broward sits under HVHZ rules. There is no inland Broward exemption. A window in Weston needs the same NOA + TAS 201/202/203 pedigree as a window in Fort Lauderdale Beach. What changes between an inland and coastal Broward address is exposure category (D vs C vs B), not HVHZ classification.
How does Broward HVHZ actually differ from Miami-Dade HVHZ on a permit submittal?
Three concrete differences that matter on paper. First, design wind speed: Broward is 170 mph for Risk Cat II, Miami-Dade is 175 mph — the 5 mph delta cubes through the velocity pressure equation into roughly an 11% pressure spread, which changes which FL# products qualify. Second, the administrative chain: Broward delegates plan review out to its 31 incorporated cities (Fort Lauderdale has its own submittal form, Hollywood has its own, Pompano has its own — all under the umbrella authority of the Broward County Building Code Services Division). Miami-Dade keeps unincorporated review centralized through RER. Third, the bulletin trail: Broward's FI series (FI-01 through FI-24 currently) and Miami-Dade's interpretive memos are not word-for-word identical — fire-rating cross-references, inspection sequencing, and FL# acceptance lists diverge in small but reviewer-noticeable ways. The same Miami-Dade NOA is accepted in Broward, but the wind speed target and the submittal package are not interchangeable.
What is FI-24 and why does it matter for my Broward permit right now?
FI-24 is the current Florida Building Information bulletin Broward plan reviewers reference for 8th Edition (2023) application. It covers transition rules from the 7th Edition, clarifications on how the HVHZ amendments map onto ASCE 7-22 (including the new four-enclosure classification — Enclosed, Partially Open, Partially Enclosed, Open), and product approval matching guidance under the 8th Edition. If your project was designed under 7th Edition / ASCE 7-16 but the permit application lands in 2026, FI-24 tells the reviewer whether the prior submittal stands or needs an 8th Edition refresh. WindLoadCalc has built every Broward FI bulletin since FI-01 into the calculator's rule set; FI-24 is just the latest in a 24-year chain. Cite it on the cover page of any 8th Edition Broward submittal.
Do windows installed in Fort Lauderdale really need NOAs, even for a small replacement job?
Yes. Fort Lauderdale, like every Broward municipality, is wholly inside the HVHZ — there is no "small job" carve-out. Any window, sliding glass door, French door, entry door, garage door, or shutter installed in the city must carry an FL# whose underlying Notice of Acceptance explicitly covers HVHZ use. The NOA is typically issued by Miami-Dade County's Product Control Section and is accepted statewide for HVHZ work. On the wind load report each opening's FL# must show TAS 201 (Large Missile Impact — a 9 lb 2x4 fired at 50 ft/sec), TAS 202 (Uniform Static Air Pressure), and TAS 203 (Cyclic Wind Pressure — 9,000 cycles) results equal to or exceeding the design pressure the calculator returns for that opening's zone.
Can WindLoadCalc PE-stamp my Fort Lauderdale beachfront high-rise wind load report?
No — and we want to be upfront about that. WindLoadCalc's in-house PE sign-and-seal service is Florida-licensed and capped at three stories. That scope covers the bulk of Broward permit volume (single-family in Coral Springs, townhouses in Pembroke Pines, duplexes in Hollywood, small commercial in Davie, lanai additions in Plantation) but does not cover the Galt Ocean Mile condo towers, the A1A oceanfront hotels in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano, the Hollywood Beach high-rises, or any of the 4+ story buildings along the Atlantic corridor. For those projects, your structural engineer of record provides the seal — but the WindLoadCalc output (designed to match ASCE 7-22 + Broward FI-24 conventions) is fully adoptable into their stamped package as the wind analysis underpinning the design.
Are storm panels and accordion shutters accepted in Broward, or does it have to be impact glass?
Both are accepted in Broward — the code is method-agnostic. Storm panels (aluminum corrugated, clear polycarbonate), accordion shutters, roll-down shutters, and impact-rated glass all satisfy HVHZ protection requirements provided the FL# carries an NOA covering HVHZ use and the tested design pressures equal or exceed the calculator's output for each opening's zone. Where Broward plan reviewers reject submittals is the FL#-to-pressure match: a 70 psf storm panel listed against an 85 psf Zone 5 wall corner pressure fails on the first review pass. The wind load report has to make that match explicit, opening by opening, with the governing zone called out. Storm panels typically cost a third of impact glass installed but require deployment before each storm; insurance discount eligibility usually favors impact glass.
How long has WindLoadCalc been doing Broward wind loads?
Founded 2002 as a Florida wind load practice; the online calculator went live on the web in 2006 — among the very first online wind load calculators ever published. That's 24 years of Broward FI bulletins tracked, read, and built into how the calculator handles the 170 mph baseline, the HVHZ amendments, and the cross-acceptance of Miami-Dade NOAs into Broward permits. We've navigated seven ASCE editions inside Broward jurisdiction: 7-95, 7-98, 7-02, 7-05, 7-10, 7-16, and now 7-22. SkyCiv was founded in 2013; firm-vs-firm we have an 11-year head start, online-vs-online we have a 7-year head start. The original Broward HVHZ wind load calculator on the internet — still the best.

Broward HVHZ-adjacent calculators and code references

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