[tor-relays] relay bangs into rock; falls off cliff; recovers

[starlight.2015q2 at binnacle.cx]

Strange, right after the event the reported
number of "circuits" went up hugely
--have never seen this:

Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 4 days 0:00 hours, with 5359 circuits open. . .
Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 4 days 6:00 hours, with 17524 circuits open. . .

But the line-count from "GETINFO orconn-status"
is around 4100.

Performed a SIGUSR1 dump and see the 17k
number here too, but both the "Conn"
and "Channel" lists are around 4k:

==========

Dumping stats:

   $ egrep '\] Conn [0-9]+ is ' logfile | wc -l
   4204

Dumping statistics about 4193 channels:
4193 are active, and 0 are done and waiting for cleanup

   $ fgrep '] Channel ' logfile | wc -l
   4194

--------------- Dumping memory information:
In buffers for 4208 connections: 59566 used/565248 allocated
  For 4193 OR connections: 1002 used/458752 allocated
In 7482 live descriptors: 10293977 bytes.
In 14832 old descriptors: 20384003 bytes.
0 cells allocated on 17017 circuits. 2 cells leaked.

   $ fgrep '] OR ' logfile | wc -l
   11132

==========

Report is confusing, what is a "Conn?"
a "Channel?" a "circuit?".  The Tor 
specification does not discuss this.
Nothing from Google search.