Updated May 2026
Safest Counties for Flooding
The 100 U.S. counties with the lowest flood risk scores. These counties have the fewest FEMA claims and disaster declarations. Ranked using FEMA NFIP claim and federal disaster-declaration data from the public OpenFEMA API.
What This Ranking Tells You
The safest counties for flooding tend to be inland, high-elevation, or arid — places far from coastlines, major river systems, and dense impervious surfaces. Dane sits at the very bottom of the composite distribution with a score of 3. A low score does not mean zero risk: flash flooding can still occur with a sudden storm, and FEMA reports that more than 25% of NFIP payouts originate from properties outside Special Flood Hazard Areas.
The top-10 entries on this list average a composite risk score of just 4, with combined NFIP claim volume of only 234 across all 10 counties. That is the kind of dataset signature that matters for relocation, retirement, or business-continuity decisions: places where insured flood loss is rare enough to barely register in the federal record. The composite score is documented on the methodology page.
Top 100 by Risk Score
Grade mix across this list: 0 F · 0 D · 0 C · 0 B · 50 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 | Risk Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dane | WI | A | 3 | 3 |
| 2 | Allen | OH | A | 3 | 3 |
| 3 | Hancock | OH | A | 3 | 3 |
| 4 | Wood | OH | A | 3 | 3 |
| 5 | Marion | IN | A | 3 | 3 |
| 6 | Blaine | ID | A | 4 | 4 |
| 7 | Grayson | TX | A | 4 | 4 |
| 8 | Lucas | OH | A | 4 | 4 |
| 9 | Cass | MO | A | 4 | 4 |
| 10 | Cleveland | OK | A | 4 | 4 |
| 11 | Sullivan | TN | A | 4 | 4 |
| 12 | Tipton | TN | A | 5 | 5 |
| 13 | Monroe | NY | A | 5 | 5 |
| 14 | Camden | MO | A | 5 | 5 |
| 15 | McDonald | MO | A | 5 | 5 |
| 16 | Lincoln | MO | A | 5 | 5 |
| 17 | Bourbon | KY | A | 5 | 5 |
| 18 | Lake | IL | A | 5 | 5 |
| 19 | Wicomico | MD | A | 5 | 5 |
| 20 | Wichita | TX | A | 5 | 5 |
| 21 | Oldham | KY | A | 5 | 5 |
| 22 | St. Clair | MI | A | 5 | 5 |
| 23 | Oklahoma | OK | A | 5 | 5 |
| 24 | Hays | TX | A | 6 | 6 |
| 25 | Craighead | AR | A | 6 | 6 |
| 26 | Campbell | KY | A | 6 | 6 |
| 27 | Jefferson | KY | A | 6 | 6 |
| 28 | Muscogee | GA | A | 6 | 6 |
| 29 | Comal | TX | A | 6 | 6 |
| 30 | Jefferson | MO | A | 6 | 6 |
| 31 | Denver | CO | A | 6 | 6 |
| 32 | El Paso | CO | A | 6 | 6 |
| 33 | Jefferson | CO | A | 6 | 6 |
| 34 | Cuyahoga | OH | A | 6 | 6 |
| 35 | District of Columbia | DC | A | 6 | 6 |
| 36 | Tillamook | OR | A | 6 | 6 |
| 37 | Garland | AR | A | 6 | 6 |
| 38 | Cleburne | AR | A | 6 | 6 |
| 39 | Wood | WV | A | 6 | 6 |
| 40 | Butler | PA | A | 6 | 6 |
| 41 | Lubbock | TX | A | 6 | 6 |
| 42 | Taylor | TX | A | 6 | 6 |
| 43 | Mahoning | OH | A | 6 | 6 |
| 44 | Shawnee | KS | A | 6 | 6 |
| 45 | Multnomah | OR | A | 6 | 6 |
| 46 | Calhoun | MI | A | 6 | 6 |
| 47 | McCurtain | OK | A | 6 | 6 |
| 48 | Fairbanks North Star | AK | A | 6 | 6 |
| 49 | Denton | TX | A | 7 | 7 |
| 50 | Henderson | TX | A | 7 | 7 |
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 "Risk Score" measured for this ranking?
For this ranking, counties are ordered by risk score 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.
Safest Counties for Flooding: top 100 U.S. counties ranked by risk score from FEMA NFIP and disaster-declaration data.