A few years ago, right before my son was born, my mother-in-law was getting ready to come visit her new grandbaby. Instead of visiting us soon after the birth, she had to wait. She's lucky she got to visit us at all. She had been in one of the worst storms on record.

In practice, there is no such thing as an F6 tornado. It's supposed to exist only in theory. After all, its classification means that it is an "inconceivable tornado", and if you have lived through one, it is no longer "inconceivable". Try telling that to people in Oklahoma.

The windspeed was recorded over 300 miles an hour- I don't know the exact recording. And as a girl who grew up in tornado alley, I can tell you that most drop down for a few minutes and then dissipate. The really bad ones go for several miles, but nothing like this one. It went on for several counties. And while most tornados are rather small, this monster was over a mile wide.

It destroyed EVERYTHING, right up until her house. There is an air force base close by, and it wiped out the barracks. All of the homes to the south were gone, and it swung right before it got to her street. The most damage she saw was from my brother-in-law leaving the door open as he made a mad run into the storm shelter. Because of that, there was mud everywhere in the house.

We couldn't visit her with the new baby, because the tornado had ripped apart so many home and left the air filled with fiberglass insulation and probably some asbestos from the older homes. When we did visit, it was unreal seeing the neighborhood. We had mowed in that area, and we knew the homes by heart. But none of those homes were still there. This was a familiar neighborhood, and there were no landmarks to gauge your location by.

I'll be honest, I'm not convinced an above ground storm shelter would have survived this monster. But it would have been safer than just staying in your house. I personally would rather be in an underground one, but I suppose that this is better than nothing. I've seen some constructed, and in fact, seen them weather this storm, but it's my own personal comfort level.