Union County, New Mexico: hazard history

FEMA declared 7 disasters that named Union County between 1973 and 2020.

Most recent declarations

• DR-4529 2020 · Biological · Covid-19 Pandemic
• EM-3460 2020 · Biological · Covid-19
• EM-3229 2005 · Hurricane · Hurricane Katrina Evacuation
• EM-3154 2000 · Fire · Severe Fire Threats
• DR-1202 1997 · Severe Storm · Severe Winter Storm
• EM-3034 1977 · Drought · Drought
• DR-380 1973 · Flood · Severe Storms, Snow Melt & Flooding

Not counted above: 38 statewide declarations, which covered every county in New Mexico. 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 Union County each year. The busiest year was 2023, with 65 records.

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

Costliest records

1. Hail · May 24, 2023$5.0M
   NOAA name: UNION · NOAA record 1091594
2. Blizzard · Nov 7, 2024$4.0M
   NOAA name: UNION COUNTY · NOAA record 1216302
3. High Wind · Apr 2, 2012$375K
   NOAA name: UNION COUNTY · NOAA record 364164
4. Tornado · May 23, 2010$325K
   NOAA name: UNION · NOAA record 221438
5. Tornado · May 23, 2010$250K
   NOAA name: UNION · NOAA record 221437

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 Union 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 Union 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 Union 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 New Mexico yet; when they are, this page will count by code instead, and some counties' records will grow. NOAA names counted here: UNION, UNION COUNTY. Zones named for something else, such as a mountain range or two counties at once, are left out: 44% of New Mexico's NOAA records.
• Counts last rebuilt from the source records on Sep 15, 2026.