How much flood risk does Fayette County actually carry?
Fayette County lands at the 92.7th percentile of FEMA's National Risk Index for flooding, "Relatively Moderate" territory — a middling flood hazard by national standards — with the hazard driven by inland rivers and flash flooding rather than the coast — FEMA's model puts a flood event here at about 1.6 times a year. This describes the county, not any one street — FEMA only publishes exact parcel zones through a live map service.
Who actually carries the flood insurance FEMA requires
Fayette County is one of the counties where FEMA's own denominator for mandated flood-zone structures is missing, so no compliance rate is shown rather than a guessed one — the data quality guide covers how common this is. Across all residential structures in Fayette County, not just the ones FEMA mandates, 0.4% carry an NFIP policy — most flood damage nationally happens outside the mapped high-risk zone, so that broader number matters too.
Where Fayette County ranks
Fayette County sits at rank 247 of 3144 counties on FEMA's flood hazard scale (1 is worst) and rank 227 of 3144 by population (1 is biggest). Fayette County, Kentucky is home to about 329,437 people across 283.854 square miles of land.
Checking a specific address in Fayette County
Across all of Fayette County's 103,386 residential structures, 365 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly which FEMA and Census tables feed Fayette County's numbers. See the data quality guide for why Fayette County, like hundreds of other counties, doesn't get a clean compliance percentage.