Price County, WI: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
Price County, WI: what NOAA's tornado record says
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 27 tornado tracks touching Price County since 1950 - about one every 2.8 years on average. That puts it in our Elevated band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 63rd percentile for frequency. Among 72 Wisconsin counties in this dataset, Price County ranks 27 for how often a tornado touches down.
Has Price County ever had a violent tornado?
Nothing violent in Price County's file: 27 tracks total, topping out at significant (EF2-3) strength on 6 of them, zero at EF4-5.
Paying for it, if Price 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 Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin 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. Price County covers about 1,254 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. Price County has about 14,087 residents.