Cross County, AR Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Cross County's tornado history, by the numbers
Since 1951, NOAA has logged 28 tornado tracks crossing Cross County - one about every 2.7 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, Cross County ranks at the 65th percentile for tornado frequency. Arkansas has 75 counties in this dataset; Cross County ranks 39 of them by frequency.
Cross County's EF4-5 history
Cross County has 1 violent (EF4-5) tornado on record. FEMA centers its safe-room case on exactly this strength, not on how often a county gets touched - a hardened room is the difference between a code-built house surviving an EF4-5 or not.
What a storm shelter costs near Cross County
For a Cross County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Arkansas-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 Cross County to lose power - outbreak-wide outages across Arkansas 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. Cross County covers about 616 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. Cross County has about 16,194 residents.