Poweshiek County, IA Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
Poweshiek County's tornado history, by the numbers
Since 1956, NOAA has logged 33 tornado tracks crossing Poweshiek County - one about every 2.3 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, Poweshiek County ranks at the 72nd percentile for tornado frequency. Iowa has 99 counties in this dataset; Poweshiek County ranks 51 of them by frequency.
Poweshiek County's EF4-5 history
Poweshiek County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 33 tracks split 20 weak and 10 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near Poweshiek County
For a Poweshiek County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Iowa-specific rebate on top of FEMA's underlying 75% national cost-share program.
The outage nobody plans for
18,454 people live in Poweshiek County, and a tornado outbreak's power loss usually reaches far more of Iowa than the tracks themselves touch. A portable battery unit is the faster, no-fuel way to bridge that outage.
Read this before you rely on it
This is a county-level figure, not a per-address probability. Poweshiek County covers about 585 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. Poweshiek County has about 18,454 residents.