Is Orleans County, VT in a flood zone?
FEMA's National Risk Index puts Orleans County's flood hazard at the 60.7th percentile nationally — below the national norm for flood hazard — driven by inland rivers and flash flooding rather than the coast — FEMA's model puts a flood event here at about 1.8 times a year. County-wide, not parcel-specific: FEMA's real flood-zone map is queried live, never shipped as a download.
Orleans County's flood-insurance compliance gap
Orleans 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 Orleans 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.
How Orleans County compares nationally
Orleans County sits at rank 1294 of 3144 counties on FEMA's flood hazard scale (1 is worst) and rank 1511 of 3144 by population (1 is biggest). About 27,726 people live in Orleans County, Vermont, spread over 694.553 square miles.
What to do next if you own or are buying in Orleans County
50 of Orleans County's 14,389 residential structures carry flood coverage of some kind, per FEMA's latest count — useful context, not a substitute for checking one parcel.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly which FEMA and Census tables feed Orleans County's numbers. See the data quality guide for why Orleans County, like hundreds of other counties, doesn't get a clean compliance percentage.