Even if you do live in "Tornado Alley" tornadoes can have a surprisingly limited effect - small tornadoes have the habit of carving small paths in the city, capable of leaving one side of a road pristine and the other destroyed.
In either case, building a home out of stone would do very little to stop, say, a refrigerator picked up by the tornado moving at 200 mph. Nor will it stop the house from pressurizing and blowing the roof off, stone or no stone. I mean, it could, if the walls were a foot thick each and there were no windows.
As a result, most Americans in the Tornado Alley (who can afford it) have a basement that has stone walls, and just accept the small probability that they lose almost all of their home.
In either case, building a home out of stone would do very little to stop, say, a refrigerator picked up by the tornado moving at 200 mph. Nor will it stop the house from pressurizing and blowing the roof off, stone or no stone. I mean, it could, if the walls were a foot thick each and there were no windows.
As a result, most Americans in the Tornado Alley (who can afford it) have a basement that has stone walls, and just accept the small probability that they lose almost all of their home.