The worst i've lived through is a cat-5 Hurricane (the strongest there is).
Hurricane Iniki (Sept. 11th 1992) about 3 billion in damages, something like a hundred hurt, 10 deaths, 15,000 homes destroyed
(rough estimates off of memory)
I got to watch my fence get plucked out of the ground one by one, through what i could see between our boarded windows. All of our windows caved in, our lawn was torn apart, all of our coconut trees were de-leafed, and most of the contents of our garage ended up in the neighbors pool.
one of the news shots of iniki
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/m/aml220/Hurricane%20Iniki.jpg">
I cant find the dates for it, but I was in Hurricane Ewa in 1982, even though i cant say i remember it heh.
I think tornados a little more scary though, a bit more faster and volatile. On a side note, that looks like my car there, furthest away, the brown mazda looking car.