78 Tornadoes Since 1875. Your House Remembers Every One.

Shawnee isn't a suburb. It's a city — the county seat of Pottawatomie County, population ~32,000, home to Oklahoma Baptist University, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation headquarters, and a downtown that still has buildings from the 1890s standing next to homes built last year. That range matters when you're talking about property damage.

A pipe burst in a pre-1940s pier-and-beam home on North Broadway is a completely different job than a slab leak in a 2020 build in Charleston Pointe. The plumbing is different. The foundation is different. The clay soil is the same — and it's the same clay that holds water against your foundation like a sponge while Pottawatomie County averages 41 inches of rain per year.

I'm 48 miles east of you on I-40. That's about an hour. But I know what I'm driving into — because Shawnee homes don't fail the way Edmond homes fail. Your building stock is older, your storm exposure is higher, and your soil has been doing this longer than most of the houses sitting on it.

May 19, 2013: An EF4 tornado with winds exceeding 200 mph hit Shawnee. Researchers considered rating it EF5. It killed people. It destroyed homes. And homes that survived structurally still absorbed water through compromised roofing, cracked foundation slabs, and breached wall cavities. Some of that moisture is still there — because nobody checked.

April 19, 2023: An EF3 tornado struck western Shawnee and damaged over 1,800 structures — estimated $30 million in losses. That was less than two years ago. If your home took damage and you patched the roof but didn't check behind the walls, you're growing a timeline. Mold starts in 24-48 hours. By month six, it's structural.

The pattern: Pottawatomie County has documented 78 tornadoes since 1875 — 27 of them in or near Shawnee specifically. Add 41 inches of annual rainfall, spring humidity averaging 72%, and clay soil that swells and cracks on a seasonal cycle, and you have a city where water damage isn't an event — it's a condition.

Pre-1950s (15%+ of housing stock): Pier-and-beam foundations, galvanized plumbing, original wiring, no vapor barriers. These homes near downtown — Broadway Heights, Hyde Park, College View — were built before building codes existed in any meaningful sense. When a pipe bursts in a 1940s galvanized system, the rest of the system is at the same corrosion stage. Every joint is a countdown.

1960s-1990s ranch era (majority of stock): The median Shawnee home was built in 1973. That means cast iron drain lines, copper supply with soldered joints, composition roofing hitting replacement age, and HVAC systems that have been condensing moisture into ductwork for decades. This era represents the bulk of my calls — because these homes are old enough to have problems and new enough that people don't expect them.

2000s-present (Highland Farm, Charleston Pointe, Windmill Ridge): Post-tensioned slabs on Pottawatomie County clay, tankless water heaters, engineered hardwood, open floor plans that let one leak spread farther. New construction doesn't mean no problems — it means different problems. Slab movement, condensate drain failures, and tight building envelopes that trap moisture instead of releasing it.