Carroll County, MS: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
Carroll County's tornado history, by the numbers
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 27 tornado tracks touching Carroll County since 1953 - about one every 2.8 years on average. That puts it in our Elevated band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 63rd percentile for frequency. Mississippi has 82 counties in this dataset; Carroll County ranks 54 of them by frequency.
Has Carroll County ever had a violent tornado?
Nothing violent in Carroll County's file: 27 tracks total, topping out at significant (EF2-3) strength on 12 of them, zero at EF4-5.
Paying for it, if Carroll County's history says you should
Mississippi's Mississippi Emergency Management Agency's Safe Room Program is the number that matters for a Carroll County homeowner: 75% of an approved shelter, capped at $3,500, cutting the typical $2,890-$13,280 national range to about $722.5-$9,780 net.
The gap a shelter does not cover
9,378 people live in Carroll County, and a tornado outbreak's power loss usually reaches far more of Mississippi than the tracks themselves touch. A portable battery unit is the faster, no-fuel way to bridge that outage.
Check your coverage, not just your risk
Because Mississippi allows wind/hail exclusions on standard homeowners policies, a Carroll County homeowner should confirm tornado wind damage is actually covered, not assume it - a separate endorsement is common here.
County-level, not address-level
Treat this as a county-wide figure, not a prediction for one address. Carroll County covers about 628 square miles, so a single touch here counts the same as a single touch in a county a fraction of that size. And records from before the 1990s, NOAA notes, undercount weaker tornadoes in areas with less storm-spotting coverage at the time. Carroll County has about 9,378 residents.