LaMoure County, ND: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
LaMoure County's tornado history, by the numbers
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 39 tornado tracks touching LaMoure County since 1955 - about one every 1.9 years on average. That puts it in our Elevated band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 79th percentile for frequency. Within North Dakota alone, LaMoure County ranks 18 of 53 counties for tornado frequency.
Has LaMoure County ever had a violent tornado?
Yes, 1 time: LaMoure 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 LaMoure 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 North Dakota 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
The storm that misses LaMoure County outright can still take its power out - outbreak-scale outages across North Dakota are common well beyond the tracked path. A battery-backup unit handles that without a generator's setup or fuel.
County-level, not address-level
Treat this as a county-wide figure, not a prediction for one address. LaMoure County covers about 1,146 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. LaMoure County has about 4,051 residents.