Or, now the Oklahoma tornado of 2013.

There are thousands of shelters in Oklahoma -- to the extent, Tanner told me, that the state "has been the most active shelter state, probably, within the United States." Yesterday, however, that wasn't enough. The storm was deadly in part because there were so few places -- underground places -- for people to escape to. As Weather Nation's Paul Douglas noted last night, fewer than one in 10 Oklahomans have access to the basements that stand the best chance of keeping them safe when a "monster" -- another appropriately awful euphemism -- strikes.

So why weren't there more underground shelters for people to escape to yesterday? Why aren't houses in the vast stretch of prairie known as Tornado Alley routinely equipped with storm cellars?

There are, unsurprisingly, several reasons. But what they come down to is this: Yesterday's tornado was deadly, ultimately, not just because of the vagaries of the sky. It was deadly, too, because of the fickleness of the ground.

Ground That's Made of Clay

The relative dearth of storm cellars in Oklahoma may be partially attributed, as things so often can, to environmental factors. The soil in the state is composed largely of clay -- and that's particularly true in central Oklahoma, where Moore is located. ("Soils in the Central Rolling Red Prairies," geologists at Oklahoma State put it (pdf), "are dark and loamy with clayey to loamy subsoils developed on Permian shales, mudstones, sandstones and/or alluvial deposits under tall grasses.")

The ground in central Oklahoma tends to be soft and moist -- right down to the bedrock that sits, generally, some 20 to 100 feet below the surface.

Here's the problem with that when it comes to building basements and underground shelters: Clay is particularly fickle as a foundation for construction. When loamy soils absorb rainwater, they expand. And when the weather's dry, they contract. This inevitable and yet largely unpredictable variability makes basement-building a particular challenge, since it makes it nearly impossible to establish firm foundations for underground construction.

And while above-ground homes can be built on these somewhat shaky foundations, adding the element of open space in the form of a basement is a nearly impossible feat of engineering. There is a chance your house, its basement surrounded by glorified mud, will eventually simply topple into itself.

To mitigate this, contractors have been experimenting with steel reinforcements for basements, bolstering underground walls with steel beams that are drilled directly into the bedrock below. The problem here, though, is that much of Oklahoma's bedrock is composed of limestone (pdf), which, just like the soil above it, absorbs water. And which, when it's sapped of moisture, becomes chalky.