States with the highest flood risk
Ranked by FEMA NFIP historical claims per 1,000 housing units. Higher means a larger share of the state’s homes have a documented flood loss on file.
Flood risk is hard to compare across states because the raw claim counts mostly track how much housing exists in a state. Florida and California will always sit near the top by total claims regardless of whether their homes are particularly exposed, simply because they have more homes. To make states comparable, this ranking divides the historical FEMA NFIP claim count in each state by the state's housing unit count, then expresses it as claims per 1,000 housing units. That normalization changes the picture: Louisiana's per-1,000 rate dwarfs Florida's even though Florida's absolute claim count is larger, because so much of Louisiana's housing stock sits in coastal parishes that have flooded repeatedly since 1978. Historical claims are a floor on documented losses, not a ceiling on future risk. They under-count uninsured losses, do not capture parcel-level exposure, and predate every climate trend that has accelerated coastal flooding in the last decade. Use the ranking as a coarse exposure signal at the state level, then drill into the county pages and the FEMA Flood Map Service Center for any property you actually consider.
Top 20: highest claims per 1,000 housing units
Bars show NFIP claims paid since 1978 divided by Census housing units, expressed per 1,000 units.
Top 50 sortable table
Click any column to sort. Click a state for the full county-by-county flood breakdown.
| # | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | 26.84 | 47,387 | $2,104,056,218 | 100.0% |
| 2 | New Jersey | 17.90 | 61,536 | $2,439,687,373 | 100.0% |
| 3 | Florida | 13.21 | 110,318 | $6,964,458,843 | 100.0% |
| 4 | Texas | 7.85 | 81,629 | $4,781,077,644 | 79.9% |
| 5 | New York | 6.47 | 49,180 | $2,279,427,342 | 100.0% |
| 6 | North Carolina | 5.79 | 23,704 | $657,001,796 | 99.0% |
| 7 | South Carolina | 5.64 | 11,347 | $272,126,518 | 97.8% |
| 8 | Vermont | 5.11 | 1,358 | $50,399,717 | 100.0% |
| 9 | Mississippi | 4.67 | 5,198 | $109,627,978 | 97.6% |
| 10 | North Dakota | 4.63 | 1,387 | $46,333,787 | 67.9% |
| 11 | Rhode Island | 4.23 | 1,827 | $44,252,842 | 100.0% |
| 12 | Delaware | 3.51 | 1,365 | $19,790,384 | 100.0% |
| 13 | South Dakota | 3.26 | 1,069 | $19,028,813 | 68.2% |
| 14 | West Virginia | 3.10 | 2,221 | $48,267,196 | 100.0% |
| 15 | Kentucky | 2.83 | 4,950 | $133,386,679 | 95.0% |
| 16 | Missouri | 2.40 | 5,822 | $176,628,569 | 89.6% |
| 17 | Alabama | 2.25 | 4,294 | $106,646,093 | 92.5% |
| 18 | Pennsylvania | 2.23 | 11,597 | $293,845,006 | 100.0% |
| 19 | Virginia | 1.96 | 6,408 | $98,186,978 | 95.5% |
| 20 | Tennessee | 1.93 | 5,225 | $173,600,657 | 97.9% |
| 21 | Arkansas | 1.92 | 2,247 | $68,665,880 | 98.7% |
| 22 | Iowa | 1.86 | 2,283 | $50,434,770 | 82.8% |
| 23 | Hawaii | 1.76 | 850 | $34,321,725 | 80.0% |
| 24 | Nebraska | 1.75 | 1,321 | $33,733,074 | 74.2% |
| 25 | Massachusetts | 1.58 | 4,326 | $70,637,163 | 100.0% |
| 26 | Maryland | 1.46 | 3,392 | $44,958,400 | 100.0% |
| 27 | Illinois | 1.43 | 7,049 | $108,620,721 | 95.1% |
| 28 | Maine | 1.40 | 814 | $22,186,434 | 100.0% |
| 29 | Georgia | 1.21 | 4,720 | $94,726,564 | 88.1% |
| 30 | New Hampshire | 1.10 | 598 | $13,727,940 | 100.0% |
| 31 | Montana | 1.00 | 435 | $5,720,587 | 78.6% |
| 32 | Oklahoma | 1.00 | 1,494 | $50,396,653 | 89.6% |
| 33 | Indiana | 0.82 | 2,177 | $41,196,711 | 98.9% |
| 34 | Colorado | 0.80 | 1,802 | $36,631,803 | 82.8% |
| 35 | Ohio | 0.70 | 3,340 | $56,995,169 | 100.0% |
| 36 | Kansas | 0.68 | 743 | $15,319,956 | 67.6% |
| 37 | Washington | 0.68 | 2,024 | $56,477,102 | 100.0% |
| 38 | Michigan | 0.67 | 2,657 | $47,524,953 | 86.7% |
| 39 | Alaska | 0.65 | 160 | $4,934,861 | 53.3% |
| 40 | Wisconsin | 0.60 | 1,466 | $28,679,869 | 98.6% |
| 41 | New Mexico | 0.58 | 470 | $13,815,077 | 84.8% |
| 42 | Minnesota | 0.54 | 1,209 | $16,775,498 | 94.3% |
| 43 | District of Columbia | 0.52 | 165 | $2,181,401 | 100.0% |
| 44 | Oregon | 0.41 | 687 | $11,717,007 | 94.4% |
| 45 | Wyoming | 0.41 | 94 | $569,005 | 91.3% |
| 46 | Idaho | 0.38 | 248 | $2,485,017 | 81.8% |
| 47 | California | 0.37 | 4,954 | $125,745,920 | 98.3% |
| 48 | Arizona | 0.26 | 720 | $13,255,656 | 100.0% |
| 49 | Nevada | 0.21 | 248 | $4,491,463 | 88.2% |
| 50 | Utah | 0.16 | 164 | $930,174 | 72.4% |
Methodology
- Source: FEMA OpenFEMA NFIP claims (paid claims since 1978), summed across counties in the state.
- Claims per 1,000 housing units uses the Census ACS five-year housing unit count as the denominator. This normalizes for state size so absolute population leaders do not dominate the ranking.
- Total claims paid is the sum of paid amounts in nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted.
- Coverage column shows the share of counties in the state with any FEMA flood data on file. Low coverage means the per-1,000 figure may understate exposure.
- Historical NFIP claims under-count uninsured losses, exclude properties without NFIP policies, and predate recent climate shifts. They are a floor, not a ceiling, on flood risk.
- For parcel-level flood-zone determinations, use the FEMA Flood Map Service Center.