Marshall County, SD Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
How likely is a tornado in Marshall County, SD?
Since 1953, NOAA has logged 23 tornado tracks crossing Marshall County - one about every 3.3 years, which lands it in our Moderate band. Nationally, Marshall County ranks at the 56th percentile for tornado frequency. Among 66 South Dakota counties in this dataset, Marshall County ranks 42 for how often a tornado touches down.
Marshall County's EF4-5 history
Marshall County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 23 tracks split 19 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 Marshall County
For a Marshall 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
Tornado outbreaks routinely knock out power across South Dakota for days, separately from any single house getting hit. A portable battery bank keeps a fridge, phone chargers and a radio running through that gap - cheaper and faster to set up than a generator.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Marshall County covers about 838 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. Marshall County has about 4,395 residents.