Custer County’s tornado record includes 74 storms from 1950 through 2025. For a shelter in Clinton or Weatherford, ask the installer to check the flood map before pricing a location.

Cutaway illustration of a house with a storm shelter below the garage floor and a separate underground shelter in the back yard
Two common placements: below the garage floor and underground in the yard.

The 1967 F4

All four tornado deaths in the county’s record came from one storm. On June 10, 1967, an F4 killed 4 people and injured 1. Its path ran 8.7 miles and stayed inside Custer County. It is also the only F4 or stronger in the record. Four other tornadoes reached F3/EF3.

NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center assigns each tornado its highest rating along the full track.

A busier recent decade

The 14 tornadoes of 2016–2025 are almost one in five of the county’s 74. Better radar and more storm spotters now catch weak tornadoes that older records missed. So the count of F3/EF3-or-stronger tornadoes is the steadier way to compare decades. On that measure, the recent ten years had none. Four tornadoes in the file have no rating, and SPC estimated three older ratings later from damage reports.

Soil and the shelter site

The soil survey assigns no mapped acres to the high or very high shrink-swell classes. Shrink-swell means soil expands when wet and contracts as it dries. It rates 287,823 acres moderate and 344,522 acres low. Have an installer assess the digging conditions at your proposed location, since county ratings do not describe an individual lot.

Floodplain checks

Water is the local question to raise with an in-ground shelter. Custer County Emergency Management runs storm spotting and tornado alerting across the county. Its director is also the county Flood Plain Administrator. Ask the installer to check whether a county floodplain permit applies to your shelter.

Inside Clinton, every building permit application gets a floodplain check from the city’s Flood Plain Manager. Weatherford keeps a voluntary storm shelter registry so rescuers can find people after a tornado. City details:

Published price ranges are on storm shelter costs in Oklahoma.

What to put in your quote request

Ask for a free quote with a visit to the spot you have in mind. Ask the installer to check the flood map there first. If the spot is in a flood zone, ask for an above-ground option to be priced as well. The written quote should name the permit the installer will pull and list its fee.