From ~170 mph on the Boca and Palm Beach oceanfront down to ~160 mph at the western Turnpike fringe — resolved at the ZIP, the way a Palm Beach permit reviewer expects.
Most Florida counties hand you one wind number and you are done. Palm Beach hands you a 30-mile diagonal.
The ASCE 7-22 contour lines cut across the county on an angle, so an oceanfront mansion in Manalapan and a horse farm in Loxahatchee design to wind speeds 8–10 mph apart — for the identical building.
This page exists to nail that gradient down, ZIP by ZIP, and to flag the one rule that trips up every generic tool: Palm Beach is not in the HVHZ.
The HVHZ is a two-county list in Florida Building Code Section 202 — Miami-Dade and Broward, full stop. The boundary runs straight through south Boca Raton.
So Florida statewide Product Approval (FL#) governs every Palm Beach permit; Miami-Dade NOA does not, and the TAS 201/202/203 test protocols are not mandated here.
A calculator that defaults to NOA references has just told the reviewer it does not know the county.
Representative Risk Category II design wind speeds for the Palm Beach ZIPs you are most likely to permit, sorted oceanfront-first. Higher Risk Categories compute upward inside the calculator.
| City / ZIP | Risk Cat II | What's there |
|---|---|---|
| Town of Palm Beach island — 33480 Oceanfront | ~170 mph | Mar-a-Lago corridor, Worth Avenue, oceanfront mansions |
| Manalapan / Highland Beach Oceanfront | ~170 mph | Barrier-island single-family, Exposure D |
| East Boca Raton — 33432 Coast | ~170 mph | Oceanfront condo, downtown Boca, country club homes |
| East Delray Beach — 33483 Coast | ~170 mph | Atlantic Avenue, barrier-island residential |
| Downtown West Palm Beach — 33401 | ~170 mph | Intracoastal mid-rise stack, CityPlace area |
| Jupiter inlet — 33477 | ~170 mph | Inlet-adjacent coastal residential, marina mid-rise |
| Jupiter mainland — 33458 | ~165–170 mph | Teardown-and-rebuild single-family market |
| Palm Beach Gardens — 33418 | ~165–170 mph | PGA corridor, gated mainland residential |
| West Boynton Beach — 33437 | ~165 mph | 55+ communities west of the Turnpike |
| West Delray Beach — 33445 | ~165 mph | Mainland gated communities, suburban single-family |
| Suburban West Palm Beach — 33411 | ~165 mph | Mid-county, between Turnpike and I-95 |
| Wellington — 33414 | ~162–165 mph | Equestrian estates, polo grounds, country clubs |
| Loxahatchee Groves — 33470 | ~160–162 mph | Agricultural / rural fringe, ranch and groves |
Because the ASCE 7-22 contours cross Palm Beach diagonally, two lots on opposite sides of US-1 inside the same city can land on different sides of a 5 mph step.
Coastal Exposure D stacks more pressure on top of that.
Always launch the calculator on the exact project ZIP — the velocity finder reads the per-ZIP value, applies the one-mile Exposure D flag, and returns the controlling pressure.
That 5 mph from Wellington to east Boca looks trivial. It is not.
Design pressure scales with the square of wind speed, so a ~6% speed jump pencils to roughly a 12% pressure jump.
Across a 40-window beachfront package, 12% can push products in or out of qualifying FL# pressure tiers.
Palm Beach permitting clusters into distinct submarkets — each with its own typical speed, exposure default, and product mix.
Oceanfront condo plus country club residential plus west-of-Turnpike gated communities. East ZIPs (33432, 33487) pull 170; western ZIPs (33433, 33434, 33486) sit at 165. Heaviest impact-glass volume in the county.
Barrier-island oceanfront (33480) and the downtown intracoastal mid-rise stack (33401). Both bands sit at 170; the island reads Exposure D, downtown mostly Exposure C.
Newer construction and a busy teardown-and-rebuild market. Inlet ZIPs (33477) pull the high end with coastal exposure; mainland (33458) runs 165–170 by east-west position.
Equestrian estates and country club residential west of the Turnpike. Open-pasture fetch keeps Exposure C honest. The lowest populated-area band in the county.
The 55+ community belt — country club and golf-frontage single-family between I-95 and the Turnpike. High-volume, standardized product mix.
Loxahatchee Groves and the agricultural belt fading toward Lake Okeechobee. Lowest design speeds in the county, predominantly Exposure C.
The county line is also a code line. A few miles can change the rulebook, not just the wind.
Broward adopted a uniform 170 mph county-wide and is HVHZ. Palm Beach follows the raw ASCE 7-22 map — hence the 160–170 mph gradient — and is not HVHZ.
A Pompano Beach permit and a Boynton Beach permit ten miles apart hit different speeds and different product pathways for reasons that have nothing to do with the wind.
Palm Beach County and all 38 municipalities adopted Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023) on December 31, 2024, with no county-specific wind amendments. It references ASCE 7-22.
The ZIP carries the gradient and the jurisdiction context — you confirm the rest.
The velocity finder pulls the per-ZIP ASCE 7-22 speed and confirms the FL# (non-HVHZ) pathway.
II covers most stock; III for assembly and schools; IV for hospitals, fire stations, and EOCs.
D on the one-mile coastal band, C suburban default, B in dense urban — then geometry and roof shape.
Match each opening's Zone 5 corner pressure against its FL# product rating.
PDF Engineering Report, Excel calc backup, or the architectural-schedule .xlsx for AutoCAD.
Our free wind load calculator does ZIP-based lookup with Florida Building Code overrides built in.
Palm Beach uses the raw ASCE 7-22 map at ZIP precision — drop your ZIP to confirm the speed before a permit set. No meter, every coefficient cited.
No paid testimonials — a verifiable 24-year track record on Florida permits.
No. Palm Beach is one of the few Florida counties where a single county-wide number does not describe the job.
The ASCE 7-22 contour lines cross the county on a diagonal, so design speed slides from about 170 mph on the oceanfront down to about 160–162 mph at the western Turnpike fringe.
Pull the speed for the exact project ZIP, not for the county.
Because the High Velocity Hurricane Zone in Florida Building Code Section 202 is a list of two counties — Miami-Dade and Broward — not a wind-climate boundary.
The line was drawn after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Palm Beach never opted in.
The county border runs through south Boca Raton, so an oceanfront permit there and an oceanfront permit a few miles south in Broward face the same wind but different rulebooks.
For Palm Beach, Florida statewide Product Approval (FL#) controls and Miami-Dade NOA does not.
Yes, everywhere people live. The whole populated county sits inside Florida's Wind-Borne Debris Region, which the FBC triggers at 140 mph design wind speed.
Palm Beach runs 160–170 mph, well past that line. Every opening needs either an impact-rated FL# product (glass, door, garage door, skylight) or an approved shutter system.
The calculator's C&C Zone 5 pressure is the number your FL# product rating has to beat.
Allowed if they also carry a companion FL#. A product with only an NOA and no FL# cannot go on a Palm Beach submittal, because the reviewer validates against the Florida statewide approval database.
Most major manufacturers carry both numbers on the same product line, so dual-approval products work fine — and many Palm Beach owners choose them anyway for insurance and resale reasons.
The calculator references FL# because that is what the plan reviewer checks.
Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023), which references ASCE 7-22 for wind. Palm Beach County and its municipalities adopted it on December 31, 2024 with no county-specific wind amendments.
Projects permitted under the 7th Edition before that date may finish under the earlier code.
Yes. Any address within one mile of open Atlantic water gets Exposure D instead of the suburban Exposure C default, which raises C&C pressures meaningfully, especially at building corners.
The calculator auto-flags Exposure D for Palm Beach island, Singer Island, Highland Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, the Boca Raton oceanfront, and the Jupiter Inlet ZIPs.
Separate from the wind math, seaward-of-CCCL projects also draw a Florida DEP review.
As an Open or Partially Open structure under ASCE 7-22, not Enclosed. That swaps the internal pressure coefficient GCpi from ±0.18 (Enclosed) to ±0.55 (Open), which flows straight through the C&C math.
The aluminum frame still designs to the full ZIP wind speed; the screen mesh gets a partial reduction because air passes through.
The calculator supports all four ASCE 7-22 enclosure types so the cage is modeled correctly.
For Florida structures up to 3 stories, our in-house Florida-licensed P.E. can sign and seal — which covers single-family across every Palm Beach submarket plus small commercial.
The 4–12 story beachfront condo stock in Boca, downtown West Palm Beach, and on Palm Beach island is outside that scope and needs a structural engineer of record.
For those, the WindLoadCalc Engineering Report is built to drop into your PE's calc package as the wind basis.
Since 2002, online since 2006. We have carried Palm Beach permit work through Frances and Jeanne (2004), Wilma (2005), Matthew (2016), and Irma (2017).
That spans seven ASCE 7 editions from 7-95 to 7-22, with a 100% permit-approval record across 24 years.
From Manalapan oceanfront to Wellington estates, the Palm Beach gradient resolved at ZIP precision — ASCE 7-22 + FBC 8th Edition. Or run the free wind speed lookup first.