Wind gauge not showing actual wind gusts

At my location in the northern part of Norway we had a terrible weather lately, with wind strength that tore down a lot of trees and moved quite heavy things around. My wind gauge is mounted on a pole 7,7 m above ground an with no obstacles in the surroundings. The gauge reported, at most, 25 m/s max wind gust strength. That number is actually at the low side of  the "full storm" scale (24,5-28,4 m/s). A full storm wind at 25-28 m/s is quite common here and will not normally tear down trees!
I have lived through some nasty weather and strong winds througout my 70 years life and I am convinced that the wind gusts was much, much higher and at least into the 30 - 35 m/s area. 
Maybe Netatno can explain this? And please don't give me the talk about "the standard height at which the wind should be measured is 10 meters and on an open field". 
Regards Hjalmar