Drought Risk in the US: How FEMA Scores It and How to Prepare
Drought is the slowest disaster in the National Risk Index — no sirens, no landfall, just rain that doesn’t come. It is also one of the most economically corrosive: the 2012 drought alone cost the US economy on the order of $30 billion, and the Southwest’s 2000–2022 megadrought was the region’s driest 22-year stretch in over a millennium. In the NRI, drought (hazard code DRGT) carries roughly $2.7 billion in national expected annual loss across 2,760 counties — and the losses concentrate where the crops are.
What counts as drought risk
The NRI’s drought hazard covers extended dry periods that stress water supplies and agriculture. Meteorologists distinguish several flavors that chain together: meteorological drought (precipitation deficit) becomes agricultural drought (soil moisture too low for crops) becomes hydrological drought (reservoirs, rivers, and aquifers depleted). The US Drought Monitor tracks all of this weekly on its D0–D4 scale.
Crucially, the NRI’s drought losses are overwhelmingly agricultural — crop and livestock losses, not urban property damage. That shapes the map: drought risk lives where irrigated, high-value agriculture depends on water that periodically fails. Drought is also a force multiplier for other NRI hazards — it cures fuels for wildfire and stresses the water systems cities depend on.
How the NRI measures it
FEMA combines each county’s agricultural exposure (crop and livestock value), annualized drought frequency from Drought Monitor records, and historic loss ratios (heavily informed by USDA crop-insurance loss data) into an Expected Annual Loss scored 0–100 against all counties. Counties with little agriculture can rate low even in chronically dry regions — the index measures dollars at stake, not aridity.
Where the risk concentrates
The ranking reads like a map of America’s produce aisle. Fresno County, CA leads the nation (score 100, ~$223M expected annual loss) — the most agriculturally productive county in the US, drawing on the over-allocated San Joaquin Valley water system. The rest of the top five is all Central Valley and Central Coast California: Monterey (~$81M — the “Salad Bowl of the World”), San Joaquin, Merced, and Madera counties, each recording drought conditions 70–95 times per year on average in the underlying data. High ratings continue through the High Plains wheat and cattle belt (Kansas, Nebraska, Texas Panhandle) and the Colorado River basin states.
How to read your county’s score
If your county rates High or Very High, the exposure is probably economic rather than personal safety: farm income, ranch feed costs, rural water systems, and — indirectly — wildfire danger. For households, the practical questions are: Does your water come from a small rural system or private well vulnerable to depletion? (Well failures spike in drought years; deepening a well costs tens of thousands.) Are you in a region with mandatory-restriction history? For farmers and ranchers, drought risk is fundamentally an insurance and water-rights question.
What actually reduces the risk
- For farms: insure and diversify. Federal crop insurance and the USDA’s disaster programs (LFP for grazing losses, ELAP) are the backstop that turns a lost season into a survivable one. Soil-health practices — cover cropping, reduced tillage — measurably improve moisture retention.
- Irrigation efficiency is the big lever: drip and micro-irrigation, soil-moisture monitoring, and deficit-irrigation scheduling stretch allocations through dry years.
- For well owners: know your well depth and static water level, and monitor them; falling levels give years of warning before failure.
- For households: outdoor watering is typically half of residential summer use — drought-tolerant landscaping and drip systems are the durable fix, and many western utilities pay rebates for turf removal.
- For communities: diversified supply (storage, groundwater banking, recycled water) is what separates cities that ride out droughts from those that hit day-zero scares.
Sources
- US Drought Monitor — weekly national drought conditions
- FEMA NRI drought methodology
- USDA disaster assistance programs
- Drought.gov — NOAA’s integrated drought information system