I live along the foothills of the Cascade Mountian Range. There is allot of thick tree growth. When it gets real windy, which for some reason the last couple of years have been bad, it blows trees down, especially if its freezing. Mostly big fir trees, but it takes them down all over the western state. No Tornados though, wow that sounds like you had a close call there. I guess it would be more like a Huricane type of storm that is the worst we get. I just know from my job experience allot of electrical gets taken out due to bumps and surges, especially when the power comes back on and than goes back off. Most power sub stations breakers will trip and then auto reset 3 times before the open up completely. So your electronic stuff gets hamored while the power is cycling. I had a Panamax that would reamin powered off for one minute untill incomeing power was stable. It was a nice feature.
Scott
Scott