Torrance County, NM flood risk explained
Flood hazard in Torrance County sits at the 62.8th national percentile, 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 once every 1 years. County-wide, not parcel-specific: FEMA's real flood-zone map is queried live, never shipped as a download.
Who actually carries the flood insurance FEMA requires
FEMA hasn't published a residential structure count for Torrance County's mapped flood zone, so a reliable mandatory-compliance percentage can't be computed here — see the data quality guide for why this gap exists for roughly a quarter of US counties. Looking beyond the mandated zone, 1.4% of all residential structures in Torrance County carry flood coverage voluntarily or otherwise — relevant because most NFIP claims nationally come from outside the mapped SFHA.
Torrance County against the rest of the country
Among the 3144 US counties FEMA scores for flood hazard, Torrance County ranks 1223 — 1 being the highest hazard nationally — and 2037 by population among all 3144 counties covered here, where 1 is the largest. About 15,986 people live in Torrance County, New Mexico, spread over 3,345.213 square miles.
What to do next if you own or are buying in Torrance County
Across all of Torrance County's 8,637 residential structures, 120 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
Where Torrance County's figures come from
Every figure on this page traces to a named FEMA dataset, documented in the methodology guide. Torrance County's compliance figure is one of the ones affected by FEMA's incomplete denominator data — the data quality guide explains what that means and how many counties it touches.