Updated May 2026
Counties with the Most Flood Insurance Claims
The 100 U.S. counties with the highest number of NFIP flood insurance claims filed with FEMA. Ranked using FEMA NFIP claim and federal disaster-declaration data from the public OpenFEMA API.
What This Ranking Tells You
Total NFIP claim count is the most direct read on which counties have actually filed flood losses with the federal program. Harris leads with 12K claims. The same handful of states — TX, FL, LA, SC — appear repeatedly in the top tier, but claim volume reveals patterns that pure-score rankings miss: a high-population coastal county can rack up enormous claim counts even at a moderate per-capita risk score.
Just the top 10 counties on this list have filed 36K NFIP claims combined — roughly 36% of every flood-insurance claim in the federal record. That kind of concentration is why NFIP solvency is so sensitive to a small number of repeatedly flooded counties. The Biggert-Waters and HFIAA reform legislation explicitly targeted these "severe repetitive loss" properties.
Top 100 by Total Claims
Grade mix across this list: 0 F · 1 D · 2 C · 51 B · 46 A. Click any county for the full profile, including the four factor scores that feed the composite, the full claim and disaster history, and the active NFIP policy count.
| # | County | State | Grade | Score | Total Claims |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harris | TX | D | 74 | 12K |
| 2 | Lee | FL | C | 60 | 6.2K |
| 3 | Pinellas | FL | C | 55 | 4.9K |
| 4 | East Baton Rouge | LA | B | 33 | 2.2K |
| 5 | Collier | FL | B | 39 | 2.0K |
| 6 | Hillsborough | FL | B | 37 | 1.9K |
| 7 | Galveston | TX | B | 21 | 1.8K |
| 8 | Jefferson | TX | A | 18 | 1.7K |
| 9 | Sarasota | FL | B | 36 | 1.5K |
| 10 | Monroe | FL | B | 21 | 1.5K |
| 11 | Charlotte | FL | B | 32 | 1.4K |
| 12 | Livingston | LA | B | 29 | 1.4K |
| 13 | Broward | FL | B | 33 | 1.4K |
| 14 | Volusia | FL | B | 33 | 1.3K |
| 15 | Miami-Dade | FL | A | 20 | 1.3K |
| 16 | Manatee | FL | B | 35 | 1.2K |
| 17 | Orange | TX | A | 15 | 1.1K |
| 18 | Brazoria | TX | A | 18 | 1.1K |
| 19 | Pasco | FL | B | 32 | 1.1K |
| 20 | St. Johns | FL | A | 18 | 1.1K |
| 21 | Montgomery | TX | A | 16 | 967 |
| 22 | Charleston | SC | A | 14 | 933 |
| 23 | Jefferson | LA | B | 40 | 913 |
| 24 | Fort Bend | TX | A | 15 | 882 |
| 25 | Orleans | LA | A | 20 | 774 |
| 26 | Horry | SC | A | 16 | 769 |
| 27 | Nueces | TX | A | 16 | 736 |
| 28 | Ascension | LA | B | 29 | 717 |
| 29 | St. Tammany | LA | B | 25 | 714 |
| 30 | Calcasieu | LA | B | 36 | 665 |
| 31 | St. John the Baptist | LA | B | 39 | 647 |
| 32 | Citrus | FL | B | 28 | 630 |
| 33 | Beaufort | SC | A | 10 | 629 |
| 34 | Baldwin | AL | B | 31 | 571 |
| 35 | Lafayette | LA | B | 22 | 562 |
| 36 | Dare | NC | A | 16 | 539 |
| 37 | Brunswick | NC | A | 16 | 525 |
| 38 | Duval | FL | A | 15 | 482 |
| 39 | Aransas | TX | A | 14 | 464 |
| 40 | Bay | FL | A | 19 | 463 |
| 41 | Craven | NC | B | 29 | 460 |
| 42 | Tangipahoa | LA | B | 25 | 458 |
| 43 | Carteret | NC | A | 14 | 442 |
| 44 | Escambia | FL | B | 32 | 439 |
| 45 | Westchester | NY | B | 26 | 438 |
| 46 | Hidalgo | TX | A | 15 | 425 |
| 47 | New Hanover | NC | A | 15 | 386 |
| 48 | Cameron | TX | B | 24 | 380 |
| 49 | Bergen | NJ | B | 24 | 374 |
| 50 | Nassau | NY | B | 25 | 373 |
| 51 | Chatham | GA | A | 8 | 362 |
| 52 | Ouachita | LA | A | 18 | 319 |
| 53 | Union | NJ | A | 11 | 293 |
| 54 | Virginia Beach | VA | A | 7 | 292 |
| 55 | Georgetown | SC | A | 16 | 281 |
| 56 | Pender | NC | B | 28 | 269 |
| 57 | Flagler | FL | A | 14 | 268 |
| 58 | St. Charles | LA | B | 38 | 265 |
| 59 | Beaufort | NC | B | 28 | 263 |
| 60 | Cape May | NJ | A | 10 | 258 |
| 61 | Hernando | FL | B | 27 | 257 |
| 62 | St. Louis | MO | A | 13 | 251 |
| 63 | Santa Rosa | FL | B | 32 | 248 |
| 64 | Suffolk | NY | A | 20 | 233 |
| 65 | Brevard | FL | A | 18 | 233 |
| 66 | Jefferson | KY | A | 6 | 225 |
| 67 | Liberty | TX | A | 13 | 222 |
| 68 | Pamlico | NC | B | 21 | 221 |
| 69 | Fairfield | CT | B | 24 | 219 |
| 70 | Queens | NY | B | 23 | 213 |
| 71 | Robeson | NC | A | 15 | 211 |
| 72 | Essex | NJ | B | 25 | 207 |
| 73 | Orange | FL | B | 27 | 201 |
| 74 | Cook | IL | A | 8 | 198 |
| 75 | Glynn | GA | A | 8 | 196 |
| 76 | Hardin | TX | A | 10 | 195 |
| 77 | Montgomery | PA | A | 19 | 193 |
| 78 | Palm Beach | FL | A | 17 | 192 |
| 79 | Vermilion | LA | B | 22 | 189 |
| 80 | Somerset | NJ | B | 24 | 180 |
| 81 | Chambers | TX | B | 24 | 179 |
| 82 | Plymouth | MA | A | 10 | 177 |
| 83 | Harrison | MS | B | 29 | 172 |
| 84 | Passaic | NJ | B | 23 | 166 |
| 85 | Davidson | TN | A | 12 | 164 |
| 86 | Los Angeles | CA | A | 17 | 163 |
| 87 | St. Charles | MO | A | 19 | 158 |
| 88 | Seminole | FL | B | 25 | 157 |
| 89 | Travis | TX | A | 10 | 157 |
| 90 | Middlesex | NJ | B | 23 | 155 |
| 91 | Onslow | NC | B | 27 | 154 |
| 92 | Richland | SC | A | 9 | 151 |
| 93 | Allegheny | PA | A | 8 | 150 |
| 94 | Currituck | NC | A | 10 | 148 |
| 95 | Franklin | FL | B | 31 | 147 |
| 96 | Sonoma | CA | B | 21 | 147 |
| 97 | Gulf | FL | B | 32 | 146 |
| 98 | Hudson | NJ | B | 21 | 144 |
| 99 | Lafourche | LA | B | 38 | 142 |
| 100 | Clay | FL | B | 25 | 142 |
How These Ranks Are Calculated
The composite flood risk score combines four normalized factors — claims density (40%), disaster frequency (25%), claim severity (20%), and year-over-year trend (15%). Where this ranking uses a single direct metric (claims, payouts, disasters, or policies), counties are sorted by that field alone. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA (DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2 and FimaNfipClaims). Full methodology: methodology page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is "Total Claims" measured for this ranking?
For this ranking, counties are ordered by total claims drawn directly from FEMA OpenFEMA data — either NFIP claims totals, claim payouts, federal disaster declarations, active policies, or the four-factor composite score. Tied counties keep their natural alphabetical order. The composite-score formula and per-factor weights are documented on the methodology page.
Why are the same states dominating multiple rankings?
A small number of states — typically Louisiana, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey — appear repeatedly across the riskiest-counties, most-claims, and highest-payouts lists. The cause is the same: hurricane and tropical-storm exposure puts a large share of the housing stock within reach of storm surge, and federally mandated flood-insurance rules in Special Flood Hazard Areas concentrate NFIP take-up there.
Does a high ranking mean every property in that county is at risk?
No. Rankings are county-level aggregates, and flood risk varies sharply within a single county. A coastal county can post huge claim totals from a few low-elevation neighborhoods while most of its land sits well above any flood crest. Always layer this with the parcel-level FEMA flood-zone designation from fema.gov/flood-maps.
How current is this ranking?
Rankings are recomputed every time the underlying FEMA dataset refreshes from the OpenFEMA API. The current dataset covers 3.3K counties, 100K NFIP claims, and was last updated on 2026-05-16.
Where does the underlying data come from?
Two FEMA datasets: DisasterDeclarationsSummaries v2 (federally declared disasters filtered to flood-related types) and FimaNfipClaims (individual NFIP claims aggregated by county FIPS code). Both are public-domain U.S. government work, distributed through the OpenFEMA API. Real-time stream-gauge context that complements the federal aggregates is at waterdata.usgs.gov.
Counties with the Most Flood Insurance Claims: top 100 U.S. counties ranked by total claims from FEMA NFIP and disaster-declaration data.