How likely is a tornado where I live?

All 3,144 US counties NOAA has on record. Start typing.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has tracked every recorded tornado in the US since 1950 - 76 years of data, aggregated here to the county level, free to check.

Ask this first: has it ever been violent, not just frequent

EF0-1, weak - shingles, branches, minor structural damage. Most recorded tornadoes fall here.
EF2-3, significant - roofs torn off, mobile homes destroyed, real structural damage to houses.
EF4-5, violent - the strength FEMA's safe-room guidance is built around. A standard code-built house is not expected to survive this without a hardened room.

A county can be lower-frequency overall and still have taken one of these. That single fact changes the shelter math more than the raw touch count does.

EF0-1

61,437

EF2-3

15,979

EF4-5

1,131

Unrated

1,597

80,144 recorded tracks nationally, NOAA Storm Prediction Center, 1950-2025.

What it costs to do something about it

The shelter itself

A storm shelter or in-residence safe room runs $2,890–$13,280 nationally, about $7,645 typical. FEMA funds 75% of an approved safe room through its Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants nationwide; a handful of states (Oklahoma, Mississippi, Indiana, Nebraska) currently run their own homeowner-facing rebate on top of that, some lottery-based or between funding rounds - your county page shows what applies where you are.

The outage after it

Tornado outbreaks routinely knock out power across a much wider area than the tracks themselves touch. A portable battery bank keeps a fridge and phones running through that gap without the fuel and venting a generator needs.

See every state's tornado risk overview

Or browse all 3,144 counties A-Z

NOAA's own record, not a guess

TornadoRiskCheck reports the Storm Prediction Center's actual tornado-track database for 3,144 US counties, 76 years of records rather than a modeled estimate. 774 counties in this dataset have recorded at least one violent (EF4-5) tornado.

Frequency is not the whole answer

A county's touch count describes how often a tornado has crossed it, not what it would do to a specific house. This site pairs that record with whether a violent tornado has ever been recorded there - the field FEMA's own safe-room guidance is built around - and sourced shelter cost, so the next question, is a shelter worth it, has real numbers behind it.