FEMA Records
10
Low volume
Nebraska · FEMA + NOAA + National Risk Index
Cheyenne County, NE
10 FEMA disaster declarations (1998-2024), with a FEMA National Risk Index rating of Very Low. Most common hazard: Severe Storm.
- 10
- FEMA declarations
- 8
- Major disasters
- 28
- NRI risk · Very Low
- Severe Storm
- Top hazard
The verdict
Cheyenne County has a nationally busy FEMA history: 10 declarations, more than 10% of counties in this registry. But the state comparison tempers that reading: the total is 40% below the Nebraska county mean. FEMA's separate National Risk Index places the county safer than 28%; that score models loss and vulnerability rather than counting declarations.
- Safer than 28%
- of U.S. counties for FEMA National Risk Index score
- Very Low
- FEMA National Risk Index rating
- 10
- FEMA declarations vs 21 national county avg
- 27
- NFIP flood insurance claims filed
FEMA's National Risk Index and its declaration registry are separate measures. This county's registry includes Major Disaster (DR) and Emergency (EM) records; an EM authorizes a narrower set of federal assistance than a DR.
FEMA OpenFEMA declaration desk
County FIPS 31033 · Cheyenne County 10 declarations · rank 2877/3,266
DECL-MID · MAJOR-HEAVY · RANK-LOWER · PHOTO-FINISH · NRI-LOW · ACT-HIGH · TYPE-LEAD · VS-ST-BELOW
- DECL-MID 10
- MAJOR-HEAVY 80%
- RANK-LOWER #2,877
- PHOTO-FINISH Clinton
- NRI-LOW Very Low
- ACT-HIGH High
- TYPE-LEAD Severe Storm
- VS-ST-BELOW -40%
Nearest declaration peer: Clinton, MI (0 declaration gap)
FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 filing stamps for this county register. Read with this county → · Nebraska state profile
Cheyenne County among counties with fewer federal records
FEMA declaration records among Cheyenne County and nearest peers by total count
- Los Angeles · largest
Los Angeles · largest
88 declarations
- Cheyenne · this county 10
Cheyenne · this county
10 declarations
- Clinton · near 10
Clinton · near
10 declarations
- Golden Valley · near 10
Golden Valley · near
10 declarations
- Jackson · near 10
Jackson · near
10 declarations
- Ujelang · smallest 1
Ujelang · smallest
1 declarations
What this shows Cheyenne County carries 10 FEMA declaration records, ranked 2877 of 3,266 counties in this registry.
Cheyenne County versus quieter counties in this dataset
Cheyenne County among lower-declaration counties nationally
FEMA disaster declarations, all-time · Cheyenne County
10 10th percentile higher than 10% of 3,266 counties
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more counties. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source FEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 · 2026-08-25
Cheyenne County's FEMA Risk Index score
Which hazard drives modeled loss here?
FEMA's modeled annual dollar loss for Cheyenne County is led by Riverine Flooding (about $4.1M Expected Annual Loss, Historical Loss Ratio Relatively High), while Drought carries the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively High). EAL and risk score use different inputs; they need not agree.
Source: FEMA National Risk Index (December 2025 release) - Expected Annual Loss vs composite risk rating by hazard.
What does Cheyenne County's hazard record show?
FEMA National Risk Index
This county's FEMA National Risk Index composite lands at 27.8/100 (Very Low), a modest reading against the rest of the country. Expected Annual Loss is rated Very Low (roughly $11.8M in annualized losses), tempered or compounded by a Very Low social-vulnerability score and Relatively Moderate community-resilience score. Of the 18 hazards FEMA models, Drought stands out as the sharpest exposure here, rated Relatively High. FEMA's modeled frequency puts that hazard at 80 modeled event-days per year here, based on 2,030 historical events on record.
Reading the federal records together
This county has a small entry in FEMA's NFIP paid-claims table: 27 claims and $76.4K paid in total. PlainHazard calls 1-49 claims a light registry record, a label for this dataset rather than a finding that flood exposure is low. A short claims history can also reflect insurance take-up, the period covered, or losses that were never insured.
Start with the state benchmark: a Nebraska county averages 16.8 federal declaration records, while Cheyenne County has 10. The gap is 40% below that mean. Fewer entries indicate a quieter history of recorded federal actions, not immunity from a hazard and not a prediction about what happens next.
47 /100
Historical Activity Index
Moderate historical activity
Cheyenne County, NE · PlainHazard-derived composite from federal records
This 0–100 index is an explicit PlainHazard composite from FEMA declaration history only on the county surface (this DB has no county-level NOAA damage row) . It is not FEMA's National Risk Index, not a forecast, and not a safety, insurance, or preparedness rating. Open the calculator · Methodology
FEMA Declarations (1953–present) Low
7/30
10 OpenFEMA declarations, full ingest window (0.5x national county average)
County Disaster Density Moderate
7/25
10 declarations (0.6x state county average of 17)
Major Disaster Share Very High
20/25
8 of 10 declarations are major disasters (80%)
Hazard Diversity High
13/20
5 different disaster types declared in Cheyenne County
FEMA NRI 8-hazard radar - Cheyenne County
How to read this radar
Each axis: NRI risk rating (Very Low-Very High) on a 0-100 scale. Rounder = broad exposure; spiky = one or two hazards dominate.
Major Disaster share
80%
Mostly major
NRI risk score
28
Very Low
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Per-county per-hazard ratings, December 2025 release
How often does each hazard strike Cheyenne County?
FEMA's National Risk Index models a historical event count and an annualized frequency for each hazard type. Most hazards are expressed as modeled occurrences per year; FEMA expresses drought and heat-wave frequency as event-days per year. These modeled frequencies are not forecasts.
| Hazard | NRI Risk Rating | Recurrence |
|---|---|---|
| Drought | Relatively High | 80 modeled event-days per year |
| Hail | Relatively Moderate | an average of 6.1 times per year |
| Ice Storm | Relatively High | roughly once every 8 years |
| Lightning | Relatively Moderate | an average of 47 times per year |
| Winter Weather | Relatively Low | an average of 14 times per year |
| Wildfire | Very Low | roughly once every 1,740 years |
| Cold Wave | Relatively Low | an average of 4.9 times per year |
| Tornado | Relatively Low | roughly once every 1 years |
| Strong Wind | Relatively Low | an average of 1.8 times per year |
| Riverine Flooding | Very Low | an average of 1.1 times per year |
| Earthquake | Very Low | roughly once every 3,067 years |
| Landslide | Very Low | roughly once every 5 years |
| Heat Wave | Very Low | 0.3 modeled event-days per year |
Source: FEMA National Risk Index Modeled annualized frequency; drought and heat wave use event-days/year, December 2025 release
Disaster Types
Severe Storm 5
Biological 2
Flood 1
Snowstorm 1
Hurricane 1
What Severe Storm declarations mean here
Severe Storm is the most frequent declaration type on Cheyenne County's record, 50% of its declarations. In FEMA's vocabulary this covers convective weather: thunderstorm straight-line winds, large hail, and the multi-day outbreaks that often carry embedded tornadoes. Activity is heaviest in spring and summer, though the season varies by region.
These events behave differently from a hurricane on paper. Damage tends to be distributed along a storm track rather than concentrated on a coastline, and a declaration typically follows an outbreak that crossed several counties over a few days, not a single point of impact. Because the qualifying threshold is the cost of uninsured public and individual losses rather than storm intensity, two similar storms can produce a declaration in one year and none in another.
Declaration counts describe past federal action. They are a record of what was declared, not a forecast of future hazard probability.
Declaration Types
What DR / EM / FM mean
FEMA categorizes declarations as Major Disasters (DR), Emergencies (EM), or Fire Management Assistance (FM).
Major Disaster - 8 80.0%
of all 10 declarations
Emergency - 2 20.0%
of all 10 declarations
FEMA Declarations Timeline
| Year | Declarations | |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 1 | |
| 2020 | 2 | |
| 2019 | 1 | |
| 2018 | 1 | |
| 2010 | 1 | |
| 2007 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 1 | |
| 2001 | 1 | |
| 1998 | 1 | |
Disaster Declarations
How the 10 FEMA declarations break into federal action codes (DR / EM / FM). Same DISTINCT grain as the table below.
Download these 10 declarations as CSV . FEMA source data is public domain; our derived presentation is CC0.
| DR# | Title | Type | Incident | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4786 | SEVERE WINTER STORM AND STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS | DR | Severe Storm | 2024-05-24 |
| 4521 | COVID-19 PANDEMIC | DR | Biological | 2020-04-04 |
| 3483 | COVID-19 | EM | Biological | 2020-03-13 |
| 4420 | SEVERE WINTER STORM, STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS, AND FLOODING | DR | Flood | 2019-03-21 |
| 4375 | SEVERE WINTER STORM AND STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS | DR | Snowstorm | 2018-06-29 |
| 1924 | SEVERE STORMS AND FLOODING | DR | Severe Storm | 2010-07-15 |
| 1674 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS | DR | Severe Storm | 2007-01-07 |
| 3245 | HURRICANE KATRINA EVACUEES | EM | Hurricane | 2005-09-13 |
| 1373 | SEVERE WINTER STORMS, FLOODING AND TORNADOES | DR | Severe Storm | 2001-05-16 |
| 1190 | SEVERE SNOW STORMS, RAIN, AND STRONG WINDS | DR | Severe Storm | 1997-11-01 |
Storm Events in Nebraska
Statewide NOAA context only. PlainHazard does not currently attribute these state totals to Cheyenne County.
| Storm Type | Events | Fatalities | Injuries | Property Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hail | 6,079 | 0 | 2 | $237.7M |
| Thunderstorm Wind | 4,757 | 3 | 19 | $228.1M |
| Drought | 1,658 | 0 | 0 | $0 |
| High Wind | 1,647 | 1 | 1 | $22.1M |
| Winter Storm | 1,155 | 0 | 2 | $335.0K |
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database State-level aggregated data, 2015-2025
NFIP Flood Insurance Claims
Total Claims
27
Total Paid
$76.4K
Avg Per Claim
$2.8K
Source: FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA Claims Data
FEMA National Risk Index
Overall Risk
Very Low
Score: 27.8/100
Expected Annual Loss
Very Low
$11.8M/year
Social Vulnerability
Very Low
Community Resilience
Relatively Moderate
Hazard Risk Breakdown
Drought Relatively High
Hail Relatively Moderate
Ice Storm Relatively High
Lightning Relatively Moderate
Winter Weather Relatively Low
Wildfire Very Low
Cold Wave Relatively Low
Tornado Relatively Low
Strong Wind Relatively Low
Riverine Flooding Very Low
Earthquake Very Low
Landslide Very Low
Heat Wave Very Low
Source: FEMA National Risk Index (NRI) Ratings reflect relative scores among all US counties. Data: hazards.fema.gov/nri
The model's sharpest exposure here: Drought
Drought is the slowest of the modeled hazards and the least visible: it does its damage to agriculture, water supply and soil over seasons rather than hours, so it rarely produces the kind of single-day damage that drives a disaster declaration. FEMA scores it in event-days per year rather than discrete events for exactly that reason.
Worth noting for Cheyenne County: the model and the federal record do NOT point at the same hazard. Drought carries the highest modeled rating (Relatively High), while the county's declaration history is led by Severe Storm. That is not a contradiction, the two measure genuinely different things. Declarations record federal ACTION, which requires damage costly enough to exceed state and local capacity; the Risk Index models EXPECTED annual loss across all 18 hazards whether or not any declaration ever followed. A hazard can be the county's largest modeled exposure and never once have driven a declaration.
National Risk Index ratings are modeled estimates of expected annual loss, not predictions of what will happen in any given year.
Data-matched county comparisons
Cheyenne County's closest FEMA peer: Fergus County, MT
Comparisons use published FEMA declaration fields plus the National Risk Index composite for Cheyenne County. Record similarity, not a safety rating.
Closest declaration profiles
Cheyenne County shows 10 FEMA declarations, led by Severe Storm.
Similar Major-disaster share
Cheyenne County: 8 of 10 of its declarations are Major.
Similar modeled NRI score
Cheyenne County: NRI composite 27.8 (Very Low).
How these peers are chosen
Cohort: Published U.S. county equivalents outside the source state or territory. Each metric keeps six ETL candidates; three unique destinations are shown after de-duplicating across axes. Declaration-volume ranking combines count and Major-disaster share and prefers a different leading incident type; Major-share ranks the Major fraction adjusted for volume; NRI ranks the modeled composite score only.
Retained FEMA snapshot feed for Cheyenne County - capture-dated entries only.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by NRI score & FEMA declaration volume
Two PlainHazard-derived comparison paths for Cheyenne County: nearest out-of-state National Risk Index composite and nearest FEMA declaration count (floor ≥5 records). Record similarity only, not a forecast of the next hazard.
Similar NRI composite
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA NRI score. This county: 27.8 (Very Low).
Similar declaration volume
Nearest out-of-state counties by FEMA declaration count. This county: 10. NRI peers are excluded so the two link sets stay distinct.
Further reading for this county
Most disaster-prone counties
With 10 FEMA declarations, Cheyenne County sits in the high-volume declaration band - see how that count ranks against other U.S. counties.
More PlainHazard guides
- Most disaster-prone counties - U.S. counties ranked by FEMA declaration totals.
- Understanding disaster data - declarations vs storm events vs NRI scores.
- Preparing for natural disasters - household checklist (not county-specific advice).
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common disaster type in Cheyenne County?
The most common disaster type in Cheyenne County is Severe Storm, with 5 declarations. Other disaster types include Biological (2), Flood (1), Snowstorm (1).
How does Cheyenne County's FEMA declaration record compare with the Nebraska average?
The typical Nebraska county has 16.8 FEMA declaration records; Cheyenne County has 10, or 40% fewer. Against the national county mean of 20.7, this county's total is 52% lower. The comparison is historical and says nothing about the probability of a future event.
How many major FEMA disaster declarations has Cheyenne County received?
Cheyenne County has received 8 major disaster declarations, representing 80% of all 10 disaster declarations.
How many flood insurance claims has Cheyenne County filed?
Cheyenne County has 27 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims totaling $76.4K in payments, with an average of $2.8K per claim.
Does FEMA's top risk-rated hazard match the highest Expected Annual Loss in Cheyenne County?
No. In Cheyenne County, Drought has the highest National Risk Index rating (Relatively High), while Riverine Flooding leads Expected Annual Loss at about $4.1M. FEMA's risk score and dollar-loss model use different inputs, so the leaders often differ.
What was the worst year for disasters in Cheyenne County?
The most active year for disaster declarations in Cheyenne County was 2020, with 2 declarations. The county has FEMA disaster data spanning 1998 to 2024.
What is the FEMA National Risk Index score for Cheyenne County?
According to the FEMA National Risk Index, Cheyenne County, Nebraska has an overall risk score of 27.8 out of 100 (Very Low). Social vulnerability here rates Very Low, while community resilience comes in at Relatively Moderate. The Expected Annual Loss (EAL) score is Very Low, representing $11.8M in annualized losses.
Which natural hazard poses the greatest risk to Cheyenne County?
The top hazard flagged by FEMA's NRI for Cheyenne County as of the latest release is Drought (risk rating: Relatively High). Other significant hazards include Hail (Relatively Moderate) and Ice Storm (Relatively High). FEMA's modeled event frequency puts drought here at 80 modeled event-days per year, drawn from 2,030 historical events on record. FEMA derives these ratings from historical event frequency, the assets exposed, and the community's vulnerability profile.
Data Sources & Methodology
Disaster declaration data comes from the FEMA OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries v2 API, which includes all federally declared disasters, emergencies, and fire management assistance grants.
Storm event data is sourced from the NOAA Storm Events Database (2015-2025), which tracks significant weather events including thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, and winter storms.
Flood insurance data comes from the FEMA National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) OpenFEMA claims dataset.
This data is provided for informational purposes only. FEMA disaster declarations represent federal response actions and may not capture all local emergencies or weather events.
FEMA OpenFEMA declarations + NRI for Cheyenne County · vintage 2026-08-25 · Methodology · Nebraska profile · Verify with FEMA OpenFEMA · Verify with NOAA Storm Events