Dallas, here's your chance to shine

Storm watch is in effect in California! This time size does matter. haha.
I've been breathing in the smell of the rain and watching with enthusiasm the big beautiful drops on our swimming pool. The sound of the rain is intoxicating to me, since I've been waiting for an "active winter season" for years.
The first heavy downpour in Long Beach brought with it reports of heavy flooding and a tornado watch. We have had tornadoes in this area of So Cal, and it seems rather remarkable. But, it's true.
When Sonny boy was around a year old, the storm activity was just about the same as this week has been. I had a dream those years ago during a windy night, that the speed of the wind was 1000 miles an hour. I thought the dream was brought on by the loud slapping of our mail box cover. In the morning I looked in the backyard, and nothing had been disturbed. Sonny boy's toys lay on his little red and yellow plastic table and bench set as we had left them. The umbrella in the big people's picnic table was undisturbed. There seemed to be some debris strewn around the yard, but this seemed typical of a windy night. When I looked out the front windows, the neighbors were gathered, standing, talking. But this was not an unusual event, either. Then the phone calls began. "There was a tornado in Lakewood. Are you OK!!!!" No way. It was a little windy, but there couldn't have been a tornado.
But there had been. Right across the street from us, it broke several neighbors windows, ripped out a patio cover and pulled up a tree, then ripped out several trees on our street farther down the block. This was all done in my oblivion since nothing happened to our house. I had to apologize for mocking both my mom and mother in law for their media made hysteria.
And 10 years later, there was another water spout that made it to land to rip off the roof of a Lucky Super Market not far from us. It even pulled out a tree from the median of our future home, which we purchased only a month or so later. That was never disclosed to us....I always wondered why there was this big dip in our lawn. A neighbor happened to mention it to me casually one day when I had the gardener fill the dip with dirt. Dusty says, "Yeah, this tornado came along and ripped that tree right out."
So, the other day, I took the tornado watch more seriously. It moved its way farther south and made the news in Huntington Beach.
There's another water spout chance in today's news. Time will tell.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/bio?section=resources/inside_station/newsteam&id=5744044