Franklin County, KS Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Franklin County's tornado history, by the numbers
Since 1951, NOAA has logged 29 tornado tracks crossing Franklin County - one about every 2.6 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, Franklin County ranks at the 67th percentile for tornado frequency. Kansas has 105 counties in this dataset; Franklin County ranks 88 of them by frequency.
Franklin County's EF4-5 history
Franklin County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 29 tracks split 20 weak and 9 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Franklin County
For a Franklin County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Kansas-specific rebate on top of FEMA's underlying 75% national cost-share program.
The outage nobody plans for
Power loss after a tornado outbreak in Kansas often reaches homes the storm itself never touched. A battery-backup unit covers the outage without the fuel and venting a generator needs.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Franklin County covers about 572 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. Franklin County has about 26,273 residents.