Teton County, ID: Tornado Risk and Shelter Cost
Teton County's tornado history, by the numbers
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 1 tornado track touching Teton County since 1954 - about one every 76.9 years on average. That puts it in our Minimal band nationally. Against the rest of the country, that is the 5th percentile for frequency. Within Idaho alone, Teton County ranks 38 of 44 counties for tornado frequency.
Has Teton County ever had a violent tornado?
Nothing violent in Teton County's file: 1 track total, topping out at significant (EF2-3) strength on 0 of them, zero at EF4-5.
Paying for it, if Teton 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 Idaho 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
The storm that misses Teton County outright can still take its power out - outbreak-scale outages across Idaho are common well beyond the tracked path. A battery-backup unit handles that without a generator's setup or fuel.
County-level, not address-level
Treat this as a county-wide figure, not a prediction for one address. Teton County covers about 449 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. Teton County has about 12,932 residents.