Burke County, ND Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Burke County, ND: what NOAA's tornado record says
Since 1969, NOAA has logged 27 tornado tracks crossing Burke County - one about every 2.8 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, Burke County ranks at the 63rd percentile for tornado frequency. North Dakota has 53 counties in this dataset; Burke County ranks 29 of them by frequency.
Burke County's EF4-5 history
Burke County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 27 tracks split 25 weak and 2 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Burke County
For a Burke County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no North Dakota-specific rebate on top of FEMA's underlying 75% national cost-share program.
The outage nobody plans for
A direct hit is not required for Burke County to lose power - outbreak-wide outages across North Dakota regularly reach homes and businesses well outside the actual tracks. A battery bank covers that gap without a generator's fuel and venting needs.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Burke County covers about 1,104 square miles, so a single touch here counts the same as a single touch in a county a fraction of that size. Pre-radar-era records (before the 1990s) are also documented by NOAA as undercounting weaker tornadoes in sparsely-instrumented areas. Burke County has about 2,154 residents.