Turns out, it was actually a tornado.
We did get hit with intense storm winds a week and a bit ago. I was actually watching it hit, out the house windows, with Eleanor. To me it looked like a "downburst"; very high straight-line storm winds. We saw big trees breaking; and it left our woods-road blocked with several big oaks down across it. Now it turns out, it was indeed a documented tornado , that worked its way across much of Fillmore county. Pretty exciting. What hit us was clearly not the horrific circulating winds of a tight "finger"; but it was some part of a tornado, nonetheless. We lost 3 big apple trees that were uprooted. But the damage to the hazels, chestnuts, and hickories, was really extremely slight. That part, at least, is encouraging.