Texas counties hit most by federal disasters

The 15 Texas counties with the most declarations

A federal disaster declaration is the President’s approval of a governor’s request for federal help after a disaster, or, for a wildfire, FEMA’s approval of a fire management assistance grant. Since 2000, FEMA has designated Travis and Walker counties in 30 declarations each, more than any other Texas county. Across the 15 counties below, hurricane and tropical storm declarations were the most common type (159 of 382). One storm’s declaration usually names many counties: hurricane and tropical storm declarations since 2000 named a median of 41.5 Texas counties each.

Every county’s counts and the declaration numbers behind them are in the CSV download.

Most Texas declarations were for wildfires

Of the 220 federal disaster declarations for Texas since 2000, 169 (77%) were for wildfires, and 165 of those were fire management assistance declarations. FEMA describes that program as help for state and local governments to control fires on forests or grasslands that threaten destruction on the scale of a major disaster. Of the 167 wildfire declarations that name specific counties, 156 named one or two, so they add to county totals more slowly than hurricanes do.

Major disaster declarations were less frequent: 40 since 2000. Of those, 12 were for floods, 10 for hurricanes or tropical storms, 10 for severe storms or tornadoes and 3 for winter storms. Walker County was in 19 of them, the most of any Texas county.

“Other” is the 2003 loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the 2013 West fertilizer plant explosion. Source: FEMA, OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries, January 1, 2000 to November 12, 2026.

Hail, wind and tornadoes, 2016 to 2025

Most hail and windstorms never lead to a disaster declaration. NOAA’s Storm Events Database, compiled from National Weather Service reports, lists 12,919 hail reports in Texas counties from 2016 to 2025, plus 9,262 thunderstorm wind reports and 1,244 tornadoes. Of the hail reports, 11,063 (86%) were of hail 1 inch or larger, the size the National Weather Service uses to define a severe thunderstorm, and 1,986 were 2 inches or larger.

Tarrant County had 465 hail reports, the most of any Texas county, and also the most thunderstorm wind reports (249). The four counties with the most hail reports, Tarrant, Denton, Collin and Bexar, are in the Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio areas, which partly reflects how many people live there to see and report a storm.

Source: NOAA, Storm Events Database, 2016 to 2025. County-based records only.

What this means for Texas homeowners and drivers

• Your policy, not a declaration, pays for most storm damage. The Texas Department of Insurance says that if you have wind and hail coverage on your home policy or comprehensive coverage on your auto policy, your insurance company should pay for hail damage. A disaster declaration is not needed for that claim.
• Know your wind and hail deductible. TDI notes that a deductible may be a dollar amount or a percentage, and suggests working out what a percentage means in dollars. Our guide to Texas wind and hail deductibles walks through it.
• Inland counties see hurricane declarations too. Walker County was named in 11 hurricane or tropical storm declarations since 2000 and Travis County in 8, though neither is on the coast. On the coast itself, wind and hail coverage often comes from the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association rather than the home policy.
• Flood is a separate policy. Most home policies don’t cover flooding. Our Texas flood insurance gap study shows NFIP take-up county by county.

Method

We downloaded every Texas row of FEMA’s Disaster Declarations Summaries on November 12, 2026, 12:44 p.m. Pacific time and kept declarations dated from January 1, 2000 (the most recent was declared on September 15, 2026). Each row is one county (or other area) named in one declaration. A declaration counts for a county when FEMA designated that county for any type of help. All three declaration types count: major disasters (DR), emergencies (EM) and fire management assistance (FM). We grouped them by FEMA’s incident type.

One declaration designated the whole state: the 2005 Hurricane Rita emergency, which counts for every county. FEMA also files two 2009 wildfires (the Loma del Norte and Cement Mountain fires) under its statewide code; each was a single fire, so they count in the Texas totals but for no county. Rows for tribal areas in the 2020 COVID-19 declarations are not counties and are left out.

Storm reports come from NOAA’s bulk Storm Events “details” files for 2016 to 2025, the 10 most recent full years. We counted Texas records of hail, thunderstorm wind and tornadoes, which NOAA logs by county. Each entry is one event; a long-track tornado that crosses a county line is entered once per county.

Our Texas county guides also show FEMA declarations since 2000. Their totals can differ by one or two: they leave out the non-weather “Other” declarations and were compiled from an earlier FEMA download.

Limits

• Disaster declarations measure federal aid events, not how much damage a county had.
• A county can be named in a declaration for public assistance only, such as help with local governments’ emergency costs, without much damage to homes.
• Storm reports depend on people seeing and reporting a storm, so counties with more people tend to log more reports. A report is not a count of damaged homes or cars.
• Zone-based wind records, such as non-thunderstorm high wind, are not tied to a county and are not counted.
• FEMA and NOAA revise their data. Counts here are as of the download dates.

Sources

1. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Disaster Declarations Summaries (OpenFEMA, v2), Texas declarations since January 1, 2000. API: https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries.csv. Accessed November 12, 2026, 12:44 p.m. Pacific time.
2. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, bulk details files for 2016 to 2025: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/stormevents/csvfiles/. Accessed November 12, 2026, 12:44 p.m. Pacific time.
3. Federal Emergency Management Agency, How a Disaster Gets Declared and Fire Management Assistance Grants.
4. NOAA Storm Prediction Center, Severe weather FAQ (definition of a severe thunderstorm).
5. Texas Department of Insurance, Hail damage to your home or car? What to do next and What to know about deductibles.

This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. The Federal Government or FEMA cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from the Agency’s website(s).