Obion County, TN Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
How likely is a tornado in Obion County, TN?
Since 1954, NOAA has logged 19 tornado tracks crossing Obion County - one about every 4 years, which lands it in our Moderate band. Nationally, Obion County ranks at the 49th percentile for tornado frequency. Among 95 Tennessee counties in this dataset, Obion County ranks 39 for how often a tornado touches down.
Obion County's EF4-5 history
Obion County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 19 tracks split 15 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 Obion County
For a Obion County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Tennessee-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 Tennessee 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. Obion County covers about 545 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. Obion County has about 30,261 residents.