Custer County, MT Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Custer County, MT: what NOAA's tornado record says
Since 1962, NOAA has logged 10 tornado tracks crossing Custer County - one about every 7.6 years, which lands it in our Low band. Nationally, Custer County ranks at the 28th percentile for tornado frequency. Among 56 Montana counties in this dataset, Custer County ranks 18 for how often a tornado touches down.
Custer County's EF4-5 history
Custer County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 10 tracks split 7 weak and 3 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Custer County
For a Custer County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Montana-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 Custer County to lose power - outbreak-wide outages across Montana 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. Custer County covers about 3,783 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. Custer County has about 11,964 residents.