Compare Counties

Comparing the two tails of the U.S. county distribution makes the spread of flood risk legible: the top-10 riskiest counties together account for 29% of every NFIP claim in the dataset, while the bottom-10 safest counties combined have absorbed only 234 claims across the entire FEMA record. That asymmetry is the most important fact about U.S. flood risk — it is sharply concentrated, not uniformly distributed.

Each county's 0–100 score combines four FEMA-derived factors: NFIP claims density (40% of the weight), federally declared flood-disaster frequency (25%), average claim severity (20%), and year-over-year trend (15%). Letter grades A–F bucket the score for fast comparison. The full formula is documented on the methodology page.

The riskiest tier is dominated by Gulf Coast and lower-Mississippi counties where storm surge, hurricane frequency, and barrier-island geography compound. The safest tier is mostly inland, high-elevation, or arid counties with no major river system and very limited NFIP take-up. The riskiest 10 counties shown below have absorbed roughly 124× the NFIP claim count of the safest 10.

No. An A grade means the county sits in the lowest 20 points of the composite distribution — very few NFIP claims relative to other counties, few federal flood-disaster declarations, and a flat or improving trend. Almost any county can flood under the right combination of rainfall, drainage, and urban runoff; the score reflects relative risk, not certainty.

Use the search on the homepage to pull up either county's profile, then open both in side-by-side tabs. Every county profile shows the same set of stats — score, grade, NFIP claims, total payouts, disaster count, active policies, and the four factor scores — making head-to-head comparison straightforward. State-level comparison lives on the states page.