Trees can take out houses, too. Lots of mass in a tree, some distance for it to fall.
Looking at the picture collection, this appeared to be an atypical storm for the area. Building codes consider typical wind loads, clearly winds were stronger than expected and stronger than anything since those buildings and barns were put up. Locally, maybe microbursts.
We frequently have hurricane force winds in thunderstorms, most trees get broken or "trimmed" by the wind before they get so big that they would be snapped or uprooted. While our standards for windows and roofing are up to that, they wouldn't work for real hurricane country where winds might be twice as strong and carry water and debris, and nothing stands up to stronger tornadoes.
We have some 14-22 story steel and glass buildings downtown on their third set of windows: tornadoes have come through twice in the past 40 years since they were built. Our original Walmart is on its second roof; that one was just straight winds in a thunderstorm, and the new roof got build much stronger.
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