Stunned! I'd lost the thread - didn't get back to it - but....
All the answers that one would expect from a survey of professional pilots and school children - but tell me, the day that I wrote the original message, our airfield forecast included "Wind 030/12G27".
OK, so as I'm at a coastal airfield and the ONLY thing 030° from here is the entire width of the Atlantic Ocean - tell me which buildings and trees the wind had to battle through to gain gusts of more than double the original strong(ish) wind.