Krzysztof Lesny, 30, equipped himself with bolt cutters and a crowbar to target devastated homes in the city's Greystone Road on 9 December.
He admitted stealing shelves from a skip and conceded he would have taken more items had he not been arrested.
Sentencing him at Carlisle Crown Court, Judge Peter Davies told Lesny he could expect "no sympathy".
The court had been told Lesny's own home in Warwick Road had been flooded during the storm.
In mitigation, he said since taking the furniture he had made a donation to Cumbria's flood recovery fund.
But Judge Davies told him: "You were going to go into people's homes and take property.
"Your approach to the flooding was to arm yourself to burgle, to assault people's misery."
A man who stole furniture from outside flooded homes in Carlisle during Storm Desmond has been jailed for 12 months.