Kansas City ain't flat!

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Originally Posted by Deborajen

I hate to say it, but all of tornado alley is tornado prone. Mature trees are really a bad thing because they can fall on you. BUT - I've lived in Kansas all my life and have never been hit by a tornado. Very few people I know have actually been through one. Just so you know what to do - and it sounds like you do - The odds are you won't go through one.

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We have lived through tornado watches/warnings in NC, but here at least there's a basement with a concrete bunker area that would be a really safe place to go in a warning situation, so I actually feel safer here than some of the places we've lived in NC. I also recently read an article on weather.com that listed cities in order of how many tornadoes had hit over the past so many decades. KC was actually quite a ways down the list. Many more Florida cities are much more tornado prone than KC. Check it out -- KC is #33 on the list:

http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_22492.html

Interesting - It's always surprising to see how much things add up some places. I saw an article a week or so ago about towns that have been hit twice by EF-5 tornadoes and the town of Sedgwick, KS, which is just north of Wichita, was hit in the late 1800's and again in the early 1900's - but not since, or nothing big, anyway. And Moore, OK just can't seem to catch a break. But on the other hand, Greensburg, KS was a quiet, older town which seemed "safe." Then seven years ago they were hit by a tornado that nearly erased them off the map.

They can hit anywhere and in this part of the country they're more likely to be BIG. But they are usually pretty localized - definitely more so than a hurricane, so the odds are you won't get hit by one. And I feel safer with a basement, too - our previous house didn't have one, so it was a priority when we bought this one.