McIntosh County, ND: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
How likely is a tornado in McIntosh County, ND?
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 22 tornado tracks touching McIntosh County since 1962 - about one every 3.5 years on average. That puts it in our Moderate band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 54th percentile for frequency. North Dakota has 53 counties in this dataset; McIntosh County ranks 39 of them by frequency.
Has McIntosh County ever had a violent tornado?
Nothing violent in McIntosh County's file: 22 tracks total, topping out at significant (EF2-3) strength on 3 of them, zero at EF4-5.
Paying for it, if McIntosh 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
Power loss after a tornado outbreak in North Dakota 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. McIntosh County covers about 975 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. McIntosh County has about 2,461 residents.