Dallam County, Texas · Dalhart
Water spreading, a burst pipe, sewage, mold or smoke? Call to be connected with a restoration company that serves Texline. Start the steps below while you wait.
Answered 24/7 by a participating local provider. We're a referral service and don't do the work ourselves. How it works
Start here
Pick the closest match. These steps limit the damage and protect your insurance claim. Skip anything that isn't safe.
With 29% of homes built before 1960 and about 37 hard-freeze nights a year, frozen and split pipes are a leading winter risk in the county.
Basements flood here mostly in July. Dallam County averages 1.6 days a year with an inch of rain or more.
Sewage backups in Dallam County spike on heavy-rain days, about 1.6 a year, when sewer mains fill up and water finds the lowest drain.
Dallam County's wettest day in the 2015–2024 record brought 2.41 inches, and about 122 freeze-thaw days a year mean ice dams in some winters.
2% of occupied homes in Dallam County heat mainly with wood or propane, below the Texas county median of 6.5%.
Muggy summer nights, lows of 65°F or more, come about 16 times a year in Dallam County. Mold after a leak spreads fastest from June through August.
Local risk profile
About 7,298 people live in Dallam County, 1,503 square miles in northwest Texas, in roughly 3,052 homes. Dalhart is the county seat; Texline is the next largest community. The county's median home was built in 1977.
54/100 Water Damage Risk Index: Elevated Dallam County ranks 84 of 232 Texas counties. See the statewide ranking and method.The three factors where Dallam County ranks highest compared with other Texas counties.
Dallam is on the colder side of Texas for pipes. It averaged 129 freezing nights a year over 2015–2024, 37 of them at 20°F or colder, cold enough for pipes in outside walls and crawl spaces to freeze. Among 232 Texas counties that's 1st.
Cold snaps are the real risk. The worst in the record lasted 10 days below freezing (ending February 2021), and the low bottomed out near -15°F on February 15, 2021.
Expect the hardest freezes in January, inside a season that runs November to March. That's when an outdoor spigot left connected to a hose, or a pipe in a crawl space, is most likely to split.
On average the first fall freeze arrives around Oct 24 and the last spring freeze around Apr 17.
Dallam gets fewer downpours than most Texas counties, but they still fill basements. Of roughly 16.4 inches of yearly precipitation, the damage comes from the 1.6 days a year with an inch or more, ranked 223rd of 232. May, July and September see the most. The single wettest day in the record: 2.41 inches, October 22, 2015. Multi-day storms matter most for basements; the wettest three days on record here totaled 3.2 inches (through October 23, 2015).
Freeze-thaw days, below freezing overnight and above it by afternoon, come about 122 times a year here. They're the main driver of ice dams and of water working its way through foundation cracks in late winter.
Housing
Roughly 54% of the county's housing was built before 1980. That puts Dallam among the oldest housing stocks of Texas's 232 counties.
29% were built before 1960. Homes from that era often still have galvanized steel supply pipe, which rusts from the inside until it pinholes, and cast iron drains that crack with age. Slow leaks behind walls are a common start to water damage in these houses.
29% date from 1980 to 1999, the window when polybutylene, a gray flexible plastic supply pipe, was used in some homes. It's prone to leaks at the fittings, so it's worth checking for in a house from those years.
Here 12% of housing is manufactured homes. Check the skirting and the heat tape on the main water line every fall, because that one exposed line is what freezes.
Renters occupy 36% of homes. If you rent, the building is usually the landlord's to repair, but your belongings are only covered by renters insurance.
Beyond water
Dallam County averages 16 warm, muggy nights a year (lows of 65°F or more) and gets the most rain in July. Keep indoor humidity under 60%, as the EPA advises, and dry any leak within 24 to 48 hours; in a humid month a wet basement left alone won't dry by itself.
Mold remediation: what to expectBy main heating fuel, Dallam County homes break down as 68% utility gas, 28% electric, 2% propane and under 1% wood. Heating equipment, cooking and electrical failures cause most home fires nationally. Even a small kitchen fire can leave soot through the whole house, because smoke follows air currents into closets, ducts and attic space.
Fire and smoke cleanup: first stepsCoverage
Calls connect to restoration companies that work across Dallam County. The largest communities by population:
Population from ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates. Townships and unincorporated areas are covered too.
Nearby
Dallam gets more pipe-freeze nights than any of its neighbors. All of its neighbors see more heavy-rain days. Sherman County has the oldest housing nearby, with 68% of homes built before 1980.
By the numbers
| Factor | Dallam | Texas median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homes built before 1960 | 29% | 20% | 56 of 232 |
| Homes built before 1980 | 54% | 46% | 77 of 232 |
| Homes built 2000 or later | 17% | 26% | 178 of 232 |
| Manufactured or mobile homes | 12% | 13% | 143 of 232 |
| Vacant homes | 15% | 17% | 127 of 232 |
| Wood or propane heat | 1.8% | 6.5% | 212 of 232 |
| Nights at 20°F or colder | 37/yr | 3/yr | 1 of 232 |
| Days with 1 inch+ of rain | 1.6/yr | 7.8/yr | 223 of 232 |
| Freeze-thaw days | 122/yr | 27/yr | 1 of 232 |
| Muggy nights (65°F+) | 16/yr | 129/yr | 232 of 232 |
Rank 1 is the highest value. Bars run from the lowest to the highest Texas county; the tick marks the median; orange means higher water damage risk than the median, green means lower.
Questions
Peak risk months in Dallam County: freezing from November to March, heavy rain in May, July and September.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024 5-year estimates (2020-2024); weather from NOAA nClimGrid-Daily county averages (EpiNOAA), 2015–2024, averaged across the county; county boundaries from Census TIGER. Reviewed 2026-10-21. Methodology