Fall River County, SD Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Fall River County's tornado history, by the numbers
Since 1967, NOAA has logged 32 tornado tracks crossing Fall River County - one about every 2.4 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, Fall River County ranks at the 71st percentile for tornado frequency. South Dakota has 66 counties in this dataset; Fall River County ranks 24 of them by frequency.
Fall River County's EF4-5 history
Fall River County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 32 tracks split 28 weak and 4 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Fall River County
For a Fall River County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no South Dakota-specific rebate on top of FEMA's underlying 75% national cost-share program.
The outage nobody plans for
7,359 people live in Fall River County, and a tornado outbreak's power loss usually reaches far more of South Dakota than the tracks themselves touch. A portable battery unit is the faster, no-fuel way to bridge that outage.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Fall River County covers about 1,740 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. Fall River County has about 7,359 residents.