Morton County, North Dakota: hazard history

FEMA declared 27 disasters that named Morton County between 1966 and 2025.

Most recent declarations

• DR-4888 2025 · Severe Storm · Severe Storm, Tornadoes, And Straight-line Winds
• DR-4717 2023 · Flood · Flooding
• EM-3477 2020 · Biological · Covid-19
• DR-4509 2020 · Biological · Covid-19 Pandemic
• DR-4444 2019 · Flood · Flooding
• DR-4154 2013 · Severe Storm · Severe Winter Storm
• EM-3318 2011 · Flood · Flooding
• DR-1981 2011 · Flood · Flooding
• DR-1901 2010 · Severe Storm · Severe Winter Storm
• DR-1907 2010 · Flood · Flooding

Not counted above: 14 statewide declarations, which covered every county in North Dakota. 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 Morton County each year. The busiest year was 2011, with 79 records.

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

Costliest records

1. Hail · Jun 9, 2001$113.0M
   NOAA name: MORTON · NOAA record 5246094
2. Winter Storm · Apr 2, 2010$14.0M
   NOAA name: MORTON · NOAA record 223702
3. Flood · Jun 2, 2011$10.0M
   NOAA name: MORTON · NOAA record 356280
4. Blizzard · Jan 25, 2010$4.7M
   NOAA name: MORTON · NOAA record 208456
5. Blizzard · Apr 4, 1997$2.4M
   NOAA name: MORTON · 2 injuries · NOAA record 5616273

Deadliest records

1. Thunderstorm Wind · Jun 25, 19991 death
   NOAA name: MORTON · $2.0M damage · NOAA record 5701622
2. Extreme Cold/Wind Chill · Dec 10, 20001 death
   NOAA name: MORTON · NOAA record 5168460

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 $2.8M on 216 claims in Morton County from 1978 to 2022.

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 Morton 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 Morton 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 North Dakota yet; when they are, this page will count by code instead, and some counties' records will grow. NOAA names counted here: MORTON, Morton. Zones named for something else, such as a mountain range or two counties at once, are left out: 0% of North Dakota's NOAA records.
• Counts last rebuilt from the source records on Sep 15, 2026.