Kiowa County, Colorado: hazard history

FEMA declared 11 disasters that named Kiowa County between 1965 and 2023.

Most recent declarations

• DR-4731 2023 · Flood · Severe Storms, Flooding, And Tornadoes
• EM-3436 2020 · Biological · Covid-19
• DR-4498 2020 · Biological · Covid-19 Pandemic
• EM-3271 2006 · Snowstorm · Snow
• EM-3224 2005 · Coastal Storm · Hurricane Katrina Evacuation
• DR-1421 2002 · Fire · Wildfires
• DR-1374 2001 · Severe Storm · Severe Winter Storms
• DR-1276 1999 · Severe Storm · Co-flooding 4/30/99
• DR-1186 1997 · Flood · Severe Storms, Heavy Rain, Flash Floods, Flooding, Mudslides
• EM-3025 1977 · Drought · Drought

Not counted above: 12 statewide declarations, which covered every county in Colorado. A declaration is a decision to send federal help, not a measure of how bad an event was. Records run from 1953. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries.

Records start in 1996. Damage is NOAA's estimate at the time, in nominal dollars, and is often rounded; it is not insurance claims data. A storm that crossed two NOAA zones in this county is recorded, and counted, once per zone.

NOAA storm event records in Kiowa County each year. The busiest year was 2010, with 55 records.

Years with no record are left out of the table, not shown as zero.

Costliest records

1. High Wind · Apr 11, 2001$1.0M
   NOAA name: KIOWA COUNTY · NOAA record 5239358
2. Blizzard · Oct 24, 1997$400K
   NOAA name: KIOWA COUNTY · NOAA record 5621990
3. Tornado · Sep 21, 2000$50K
   NOAA name: KIOWA · NOAA record 5156708
4. Lightning · May 23, 2012$50K
   NOAA name: KIOWA · NOAA record 377929
5. High Wind · Oct 10, 2013$50K
   NOAA name: WESTERN KIOWA COUNTY · NOAA record 475616

Each line is one NOAA record, linked to its page at NOAA. One large storm can appear more than once if NOAA recorded it in several zones of this county. Dollars are nominal.

No National Flood Insurance Program claims are on record for Kiowa County.

A count of claims, not a rate: NFIP publishes no count of insured homes beside it, and most flood damage is uninsured. Nominal dollars. Records run from 1978 to 2024; claims filed without a county code are not on any county page. Source: FEMA OpenFEMA FIMA NFIP Redacted Claims.

A hazard vulnerability analysis rates each hazard for probability, impact, preparedness and response. Probability is the one column the county’s federal record can fill — NCEI storm events from 1996 to 2026 and FEMA declarations naming the county — and this is what it says for a facility here, on the 0–3 scale of the all-hazards structure surveyors expect. The other six columns are the facility’s own judgment about its building, and Calchis leaves them blank.

A dash means the record does not speak to that hazard; it is not a zero. Whether a finished document satisfies the CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule is the facility’s finding and its surveyor’s. Complete the HVA for a facility in Kiowa County — the technological, human and hazardous-materials rows, the six facility columns, the approval and the printed document — or read the sample analysis on that page first.

• Every figure is counted from public federal records held by Calchis: NOAA NCEI Storm Events, FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations, and FEMA NFIP claims. Nothing is modeled or estimated.
• NOAA files some events by county and others by forecast zone, and names both. Records are counted as Kiowa County when their NOAA name is this county's name, alone or with a word like “Coastal” or “Inland” in front. The county codes NOAA also publishes have not been loaded for Colorado yet; when they are, this page will count by code instead, and some counties' records will grow. NOAA names counted here: EASTERN KIOWA COUNTY, KIOWA, KIOWA COUNTY, WESTERN KIOWA COUNTY. Zones named for something else, such as a mountain range or two counties at once, are left out: 49% of Colorado's NOAA records.
• Counts last rebuilt from the source records on Sep 15, 2026.