State Climate & Natural Disaster Risk Rankings 2026

Two things people often conflate when evaluating a potential move are climate comfort and natural disaster risk. They’re related but genuinely different: a state can have mild year-round temperatures and still carry significant wildfire or earthquake risk, or have harsh winters and very low disaster exposure. These rankings treat them separately.

Natural Disaster Riskranks all 51 states and D.C. by FEMA’s National Risk Index composite score — lower is safer. The score incorporates expected annual loss across 18 natural hazard types, weighted for social vulnerability and community resilience.

Climate Comfortranks by total extreme-temperature days per year (days above 90°F plus days below 32°F), using NOAA’s 1991–2020 30-year climate normals. Fewer extreme days means a milder, more temperate year-round climate.

These are intentionally kept as two separate rankings rather than blended into a single “livability score.” Combining them requires an arbitrary weighting — is earthquake risk worth more or less than hot summers? — and that tradeoff is yours to make based on your own priorities.

Important caveats about the FEMA data

FEMA’s composite risk scores reflect total expected annual loss and population/property exposure — not per-resident risk. Larger, more densely populated states tend to score higher somewhat independently of whether any individual resident is at elevated risk. A high score for California or Texas reflects the scale of exposure, not necessarily that a given resident faces more danger than someone in a smaller state with a similar hazard profile.

State-level ratings (Low / Moderate / High) are approximated from FEMA’s county-level score thresholds. FEMA publishes official ratings at the county level only — there is no official FEMA state-level rating. The values shown here use the same approximation method applied throughout this site.