Tornado season in the U.S. typically runs from March through June, but destructive twisters can strike at any time of year — and they often arrive with little warning. For businesses, a single tornado can disrupt operations, damage critical infrastructure, and result in thousands (if not millions) of dollars in losses. Without a proactive plan, recovery becomes a race against time.

The Cost of Tornadoes to Businesses

Tornadoes are among the most violent and unpredictable weather events. In 2023 alone, the U.S. experienced over 1,150 confirmed tornadoes. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

• The average commercial tornado claim is $45,000–$100,000, depending on the industry and size of the business.
• Tornado-related damage in the U.S. caused over $1.6 billion in insured losses in 2022.
• Business downtime can range from days to weeks, with small and medium-sized businesses being the most vulnerable to permanent closure after a major disaster.

If you operate in Tornado Alley — or even on the fringe of high-risk zones — preparing ahead of time is essential.

5 Ways Businesses Should Prepare for Tornado Season

1. Assess Facility Vulnerability

Start with a walkthrough of your physical locations. Identify areas where your facility is most at risk — such as large glass windows, roof structures, or equipment stored outdoors. Consider retrofitting or reinforcing key areas, especially in tornado-prone zones.

2. Update Your Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Your BCP should include specific steps for tornado response:

• Shelter-in-place protocols
• Emergency communication plans
• Remote work contingencies
• Vendor and supplier backups

Ensure all team members know their roles during a severe weather emergency.

3. Back Up Critical Systems

Tornadoes often result in power outages and damage to on-site IT infrastructure. Secure off-site or cloud-based data backup to preserve records, customer information, and operational systems. Agility Recovery offers secure data backup and recovery services to make sure you can bounce back quickly even if your servers go offline.

4. Establish Emergency Power Solutions

Power loss is a common side effect of tornadoes, and restoring power to your facility can take days. With Agility’s backup power solutions , including generator delivery and fuel replenishment, you can avoid costly downtime.

5. Conduct Tornado Tabletop Exercises

Running a tabletop test with your team helps you simulate a real-world tornado event — uncovering gaps in your plan before a storm ever hits. It also ensures that your leadership team, IT staff, and facility managers know how to act quickly and cohesively under pressure.

The Cost of Downtime

Unplanned downtime from tornado damage can devastate a business. According to FEMA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

• 25% of businesses never reopen after a major disaster
• The average cost of IT downtime is approximately $5,600 per minute for mid-size businesses
• Even short-term closures can result in lost customer trust, missed SLAs, and long-term revenue impacts

How Agility Recovery Helps

Agility Recovery offers turnkey business continuity solutions that reduce your vulnerability to tornado-related disruptions. Our services include:

• Backup Power & Fuel Delivery – Keep critical systems running during outages
• Mobile Office & Workspace Recovery – Set up temporary operations fast if your facility is damaged
• Data Backup & IT Recovery – Minimize data loss and restore business systems quickly
• Satellite Connectivity – Maintain communication even if local infrastructure goes down
• Business Continuity Testing & Tabletop Exercises – Prepare your team with expert-led training

Next Steps for Tornado Season Readiness

1. Schedule a Business Continuity Assessment with Agility to evaluate your tornado readiness.
2. Run a Tabletop Exercise focused on a severe weather event.
3. Ensure You Have a Generator Solution in place for emergency power.
4. Review Your Data Backup Protocols with Agility’s cyber resilience experts.

Be Ready Before the Sirens Sound

You can’t prevent a tornado — but you can prevent it from shutting down your business. With the right plan, partners, and technology in place, you can weather the storm and keep your organization running.

Unexpected disruptions can strike at any time, from cyberattacks to natural disasters. Without a comprehensive incident response plan (IRP), your organization risks prolonged downtime, financial loss, and damaged reputation.

Our guide, How to Develop an Incident Response Plan , provides a clear roadmap to prepare your business for any crisis. Learn how to identify vulnerabilities, implement effective communication strategies, and execute a seamless response to ensure minimal disruption. With actionable insights and real-world examples, this guide empowers your team to tackle incidents head-on.

Think “big picture” to craft an effective business continuity plan.

For a business built to last, expect the unexpected. By definition, disasters are unexpected—misfortune written in the stars—and hopefully rare. But for a business to survive over the long run, it must be prepared to overcome major disasters and routine calamities. Major corporations may be cushioned by their financial reserves, while a smaller business forced to close its doors during a disaster may never reopen. When disaster strikes, you want to be the exception—the business that recovers swiftly because it was better prepared and more resilient. In this eBook, we share some of the basic steps businesses of any size should take to protect themselves.

Business continuity management (BCM) and business impact analysis (BIA) are essential parts of the BCM life cycle.

Planning a BIA project and preparing for annual initiatives should include the review of new updates and requirements within your organization and new events that have occurred throughout the year that may change your priorities. Download our checklist to make your BIA process easier.

Business continuity plan (BCP) testing is the most reliable way to validate a BC strategy, and it is a critical component of continuity planning. Use this checklist for business continuity testing for an actionable plan. By skipping regular testing, you won’t know if your organization is prepared for a disaster—until it’s too late.

Testing in Numbers

According to 2019 BC Benchmark Study, 57% of companies stated that semi-annual or quarterly (consistent) testing helps to gain buy-in throughout the organization, making it more likely to be prepared for an interruption. Testing your business continuity program allows you to validate your BC plan and manage risks. In fact, 88% of our online poll respondents test BCP’s at their companies to identify gaps, and 63% of them do that to validate their plans. Business continuity testing isn’t about pass or fail. It’s about continuous improvement by learning from findings uncovered in a live exercise.

Reasons to Test a BCP

A well-orchestrated test strategy helps protect the brand, its promise, and its value proposition. If your competitors had a poor test performance or made a critical mistake in a real-life situation with a client, your company can shine by demonstrating its reliability and advance its business forward. So, why test your BCP?

• Identify interdependencies, gaps, and areas for improvement.
• Demonstrate to your clients a higher degree of commitment.
• If you are the supplier to a firm, you rise among competitors, taking on more projects, and winning new business.
• Continually validate and improve plans.
• Satisfy compliance requirements and regulators.
• Reduce recovery time and cost.

Download our Checklist for Business Continuity Testing to get an actionable plan.

Operational resilience in the financial industry affects many other niches. When impacted by a disaster, whether of a natural origin or human-made, banks and credit unions provide critical support for the entire community. From the basic steps of Business Continuity Management to advance analysis of operational resilience in the financial sector, this guide is a helpful resource while emphasizing the importance of enterprise-wide resilience strategy.

Overview

The history of business continuity planning for banks and financial crises that inevitably impact banking institutions has taught us that nothing is 100 percent certain or safe. Crises come in different forms. The guiding principle for achieving business resilience in the financial industry is to prepare and adapt to emerging threats. To become resilient in the face of any threat, organizations must operationalize before, during, and after a business interruption. There are significant capabilities that organizations must build as part of their resilience strategy to help thwart the disruptive events and business impacts. When created properly, resilience is a strategy that permeates all business functions and should be devised with a broad, enterprise lens.

The Objectives of Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity planning is essential to all companies during disruptions. In the banking industry, in particular, it aims to accomplish the following objectives:

• – To reduce financial loss to the banking institution.
• – To ensure customers and financial market participants continue to be served.
• – To diminish the negative impact of disruptions on the bank’s reputation, market position, liquidity, credit quality, strategic plans, and operations.
• – To maintain the bank’s ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations.

Natural disasters produced overall losses of around US$ 68 billion in the first half of 2020.

Munich Re, 07.23.2020

A bank’s BCP must always consider regional disasters, and possible staff inaccessibility and losses. This is especially useful in the case of pandemics. Viral outbreaks, such as COVID-19, do not only impact staff availability but also affect customers who may become paralyzed with fear and panic, leading to increased delinquencies, higher internet banking volume, more requests for additional credit, and, at worst, bank runs.

This guide outlines a complete set of practical methods for business continuity testing.

Overview

Formulating a business continuity plan (BCP) is only half the battle. A solid BC strategy needs more than just a well-laid-out theory. How well does your plan hold up in a real-world disaster? Business continuity plan testing is the most reliable way to find out, and it is a critical component of continuity planning. By skipping regular testing, you won’t know if your organization is prepared for a disaster—until it’s too late.

Testing in Numbers

Testing your business continuity program allows you to validate your BC plan and manage risks. In fact, 88% of companies test BCPs at their companies to identify gaps, and 63% of them do that to validate their plans. Business continuity testing isn’t about pass or fail. It’s about continuous improvement by learning from findings uncovered in a live exercise. Can your backup systems withstand a cyberattack? How efficient is your recovery time objective (RTO) for restoring data? Are your employees familiar with emergency procedures? Do you have an emergency communication strategy to let everyone know about an incident immediately? Business continuity plan testing is the most reliable way to find out, and it is a critical component of continuity planning. By skipping regular testing, you won’t know if your organization is prepared for a disaster—until it’s too late. Download our Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Testing to get more actionable advice on everything from testing frequency and its reasons for getting your leadership involved in business continuity planning.

Accomplished business owners understand the importance of ensuring their companies’ enduring triumph by navigating challenges head-on. Despite a business’s secure location, unforeseen circumstances remain a potential hazard. Is your organization primed to tackle emergencies efficiently and recover quickly?