Whenever you’re looking to buy a new house, you take into account all sort of things that are important:
- is the neighborhood safe?
- are the neighbors seemingly social in the manner you would enjoy?
- are the homes and yards kept up?
- have the home prices appreciated properly, or were they overpriced and all underwater?
- what’s the ratio of rentals to ownership?
- how long is the commute to work? to the local grocery store?
and more…
But there is one thing that many people don’t consider when they’re looking to get into a new home:
WHAT ARE THE WEATHER PATTERNS IN THAT AREA OF TOWN?
To be more specific, is the neighborhood smack in the middle of TORNADO ALLEY? Because wouldn’t you hate to plop down money to buy a house only to find out later that you just bought yourself an expensive insurance policy as well?
All you need to do is head over to the TORNADO HISTORY PROJECT and search for your state OR county, and all the available tornados from 1950 through today-ish will be displayed for you on a nifty Google map that you can then zoom in on to the street level.
You’ll see the dates the tornadoes happened, and the destructive paths that they took along the way. If you see a ton of tornadoes listed in your desired area of living, you may want to consider not living there if tornadoes scare you — or, at least consider buying extra insurance.
You know, “just in case”.