Polk County, Minnesota: hazard history

FEMA declared 31 disasters that named Polk County between 1965 and 2022.

Most recent declarations

• DR-4659 2022 · Flood · Severe Storms, Straight-line Winds, And Flooding
• DR-4531 2020 · Biological · Covid-19 Pandemic
• EM-3453 2020 · Biological · Covid-19
• DR-4442 2019 · Flood · Severe Winter Storm, Straight-line Winds, And Flooding
• DR-4390 2018 · Flood · Severe Storms, Tornadoes, Straight-line Winds, And Flooding
• DR-1982 2011 · Flood · Severe Storms And Flooding
• DR-1921 2010 · Tornado · Severe Storms, Tornadoes, And Flooding
• DR-1900 2010 · Flood · Flooding
• EM-3310 2010 · Flood · Flooding
• EM-3304 2009 · Severe Storm · Severe Storms And Flooding

Not counted above: 16 statewide declarations, which covered every county in Minnesota. 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. A storm filed against a forecast zone is counted in every county that zone covers, with the whole storm's damage; do not add these figures across counties.

NOAA storm event records in Polk County each year. The busiest year was 2001, with 90 records.

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

Costliest records

1. Flood · Apr 17, 1997$600.0M
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 5591911
2. Tornado · Jun 29, 2018$6.5M
   NOAA name: Polk County · NOAA record 759125
3. Blizzard · Apr 5, 1997$5.0M
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 5591900
4. Ice Storm · Apr 4, 1997$2.0M
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 5591890
5. Flood · Apr 7, 2001$2.0M
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 5238746

Deadliest records

1. Blizzard · Jan 9, 19971 death
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 5586703
2. Extreme Cold/Wind Chill · Jan 29, 20081 death
   NOAA name: NWS forecast zone · NOAA record 74824
3. Tornado · Jun 17, 20101 death
   NOAA name: Polk County · 2 injuries · NOAA record 245876

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.

The National Flood Insurance Program paid $35.1M on 1,457 claims in Polk County from 1978 to 2023.

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 Polk 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 against a county and others against an NWS forecast zone, and publishes a code for both. Records are counted as Polk County by that code — county records by the county's own FIPS code, zone records through the National Weather Service's published list of which counties each zone covers. No name matching is involved. Of 1,366 records, 812 were filed against this county and 554 against a forecast zone covering it. A zone storm is counted in every county its zone covers, and its damage figure is the whole storm's, not this county's share — NOAA does not publish that split. So these figures describe this county; they must not be added up across counties.
• Counts last rebuilt from the source records on Sep 15, 2026.