St. Francis County, AR Tornado Risk & Storm Shelter Cost
St. Francis County, AR: what NOAA's tornado record says
Since 1958, NOAA has logged 25 tornado tracks crossing St. Francis County - one about every 3 years, which lands it in our Elevated band. Nationally, St. Francis County ranks at the 60th percentile for tornado frequency. Within Arkansas alone, St. Francis County ranks 45 of 75 counties for tornado frequency.
St. Francis County's EF4-5 history
St. Francis County's record has no EF4-5 tornado - its 25 tracks split 16 weak and 9 significant. That does not rule one out in the future, only that none has been recorded since 1950.
What a storm shelter costs near St. Francis County
For a St. Francis County homeowner, budget $2,890-$13,280 for a shelter or safe room ($7,645 typical) - this pass found no Arkansas-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 Arkansas 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. St. Francis County covers about 635 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. St. Francis County has about 21,822 residents.