Merrimack County, NH Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
How likely is a tornado in Merrimack County, NH?
Since 1967, NOAA has logged 7 tornado tracks crossing Merrimack County - one about every 10.9 years, which lands it in our Low band. Nationally, Merrimack County ranks at the 23rd percentile for tornado frequency. Among 10 New Hampshire counties in this dataset, Merrimack County ranks 7 for how often a tornado touches down.
Merrimack County's EF4-5 history
Merrimack County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 7 tracks split 5 weak and 2 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Merrimack County
For a Merrimack County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no New Hampshire-specific rebate on top of FEMA's underlying 75% national cost-share program.
The outage nobody plans for
The storm that misses Merrimack County outright can still take its power out - outbreak-scale outages across New Hampshire are common well beyond the tracked path. A battery-backup unit handles that without a generator's setup or fuel.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Merrimack County covers about 933 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. Merrimack County has about 157,869 residents.