Hodgeman County, KS: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
Hodgeman County's tornado history, by the numbers
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 58 tornado tracks touching Hodgeman County since 1955 - about one every 1.3 years on average. That puts it in our High band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 91st percentile for frequency. Kansas has 105 counties in this dataset; Hodgeman County ranks 24 of them by frequency.
Has Hodgeman County ever had a violent tornado?
Yes, 1 time: Hodgeman County has an EF4-5 tornado on record. Wherever that history exists, FEMA's safe-room case applies regardless of how often the county gets touched overall.
Paying for it, if Hodgeman County's history says you should
A storm shelter or in-residence safe room typically runs $2,890-$13,280 nationally, around $7,645 for a common single-family installation. No state-administered rebate program specific to Kansas was confirmed for this site - FEMA's own Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants fund 75% of an approved safe room nationwide, but only some states currently run a homeowner-facing application on top of that.
The gap a shelter does not cover
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.
County-level, not address-level
Treat this as a county-wide figure, not a prediction for one address. Hodgeman County covers about 860 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. Hodgeman County has about 1,673 residents.