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$259 million in flood claims: what North Dakota's record shows

· 3 min read

From 1978 to 2025, flood insurance paid $259.5 million on 13,307 claims in North Dakota. Two years account for almost three quarters of that money: 1997 and 2011.

That shape, long quiet stretches broken by a few enormous years, is the most important thing to understand about flood risk here. An average hides it.

The two years that dominate

1997: $97.4 million. The Red River flood. Grand Forks County alone received $70.7 million across 2,293 claims. Cass County, around Fargo, received $10.2 million, and Ramsey County, around Devils Lake, $9.2 million.

2011: $96.6 million. The Souris River flooded Minot, and the Missouri ran high past Bismarck. Ward County received $66.9 million across 640 claims, and Burleigh County, home of Bismarck, $14.0 million.

Together those two years paid $194 million, about 75% of everything paid in 48 years.

The years in between

Most years are small. Some are almost empty: in 2024, four claims were paid across the whole state.

A few middle-sized years stand out. In 2009 Cass County received $10.0 million as the Red River rose again. In 1979 the claims were spread along the Red River valley, with Grand Forks, Walsh, Pembina and Cass counties all affected.

Ramsey County is worth noticing. It appears among the largest recipients in 1997, 2009 and 2011. Devils Lake has no natural outlet and rose for years, so its flooding behaves differently from a river that crests and falls.

What these numbers are, and what they are not

These are flood insurance payments under the National Flood Insurance Program, counted by the county and year of the loss. Three things follow from that.

  1. They undercount the damage. Only insured buildings appear. Many homes and businesses carry no flood insurance, especially outside mapped flood zones, and their losses are not here.
  2. They are not adjusted for inflation. A dollar paid in 1979 bought far more than a dollar paid in 2011, so older years look smaller than they were.
  3. They follow where people and insurance are. A county with more insured buildings will show more claims for the same water.

We report them only at county and year level, as FEMA's terms for this data require, and never try to identify individual properties. This product is not endorsed by FEMA.

What the pattern means for risk

A lender, insurer or county that looks at an average year sees very little flood risk in North Dakota. One that looks at the worst years sees two single years that each paid close to $100 million, in different parts of the state, fourteen years apart.

Planning for the average means being unprepared for the year that matters. The useful questions are about the tail: which places were hit in the big years, how exposed they are now, and whether the flood maps show it. On that last point, 18 of the state's 53 counties have no countywide digital flood map at all, including Ward. We wrote about that in 18 North Dakota counties have no countywide digital flood map.

How we counted

We summed FEMA's public flood insurance claims for North Dakota by county and year of loss. A separately written checker re-read the original files and matched every record. Each figure keeps a receipt pointing to the exact file it came from, as described in data provenance.

Where Prism fits

Prism Water Risk is flood and water risk for insurers, lenders and counties in North Dakota. It is in development, and it answers only from records it can point to. If you want to see your own county or portfolio against this history, request a pilot or join the waitlist.

Sources

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