There was a discussion on Slashdot about if risk of natural disasters could be avoided by choosing to live somewhere safer. I found a few interesting lists of disasters in the US, and figured I'd share them here.http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html
http://www.fema.gov/news/disaster_totals_annual.fema
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_United_States
In particular, that first link has a lot of interesting maps and charts, including the pretty picture I've included here. If you read through them it should be pretty clear that there are certain areas that are at much higher risk for natural disasters than others.
As with any data, you have to be careful about what it really tells you though. I wish they would use counties instead of states for one. Also, instead of total number of events, I'd prefer total number of deaths or damages. I'm also unsure if these should be adjusted for population or for area. Even so, any state with more disasters than either the largest (Alaska) or most populated (California) state is probably a poor choice.
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