Just came here to ask the same question. Hope Doug and anyone else in the path can stay safe.

Here's the current storm track forecast, with a red blob roughly over where Doug lives.
John (JBjorgen) on the other hand.. is likely a bit closer to the path.

Right now it is windy and rainy, nothing too scary. John is going to get a bit more of it than I will, he's about 30-40 miles closer to the storm path.

As a precaution we moved everything in off the deck, braced the barbeque grill against the deck railing with some heavy flowerpots in front of it. I'm more concerned about dirty power as the wind rises, so as soon as I finish this I will disconnect my computer and go to bed. My Kindle Paperwhite works in the dark so if the power goes away, it won't bother me too much.

tanstaafl.

Good luck down there! When Hurricane Ike hit Houston, oh so many year ago, I prepped by putting a line of duct tape over all the French doors in our house and setting up some bedding for us in a downstairs hallway, far from where any blown debris might hurt us.

What happened? We lost power for 10 days (uggh) but otherwise the only damage was that the back fence got blown over. All things considered, I'll call that a win.

Weather certainly can suck. When we would lose power in Minot, ND, it would be for 18-36 hours or so and would spend that time in the kitchen with the gas oven on and open warming the kitchen up, and had a permanent mattress and blankets in the basement under the stairs for tornadoes.

Stay safe Doug and John.

Looks like it's down to a tropical depression overnight, good to see.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34627612

Flooding all the way up into Dallas already. Hope Doug, SWMBO, and John are doing okay through all the rain.

Honestly, after having my apartment flooded and all the contents destroyed by hurricane Richard in Belize 5 years ago, I was a bit on edge about this one. Although we're about 125 miles inland and 5200 feet of elevation, that was a monster of a storm by Thursday night and they were predicting 50-60 mph winds where I live in Zapopan as well as 10 inches of rain.

The reality is that we got steady rain all day, but rarely torrential and very little wind. The wind gusted up a bit last night between 2 and 4 AM a bit, but just enough to blow some of the leaves down from the trees. I didn't even hardly see any branches down. I'm guessing the eye of the storm passed about 40 miles from here, and supposedly had winds that were category 3 or so, but they must have been pretty concentrated around the eye, because we didn't get too much. The mountain just to the west of us may have helped block the wind.

All-in-all, I think Mexico was spared what could have been a terrible effect. The storm made landfall in between two populated areas in a very large sparsely populated private resort. I'm sure there was some property damage there, but very little loss of life and little effect on infrastructure. We'll see in the coming days what the full effect of the storm was, but I think we dodged a bullet with this one.

Pretty much what John said, but even less dramatic. No torrential rain, just steady rainfall for about 20 hours, the most excitement about 4pm on Saturday when I was walking the dog and there were wind gusts I'm guessing around 40 MPH. Enough that I had to lean into them a little bit.

I was about 30 miles further away from the storm center than John, so effects were relatively mild.

tanstaafl.

The disorganized remnants of that hurricane blew through Houston last night, raining the whole night long. The usual low-lying areas got high water, and some of the bayous topped over their banks, but broadly speaking the city's drainage system did its job, only a few streets are still closed, and there wasn't very much damage as these things go. So yeah!

I was talking to a couple friends in Houston yesterday (one just moved there from Corpus Christi over the summer). My conclusion is all the rain was a good thing and prevented the town from burning after the Texans/Dolphins first half yesterday.

Heh. There are definitely some people who get into the whole NFL thing, but it's not anywhere near as deep as the places that have had teams forever. It's hard to think of the Texans as "my" team when I've been here longer than they have.

Of course, I tend to feel that way about all professional sports, so I recognize that I'm a bit of an outlier.

I never will understand how people in a city can have a "My Team" attitude toward any major professional sports team. The players are there to get a huge paycheck and for the most part don't give a rats ass about the city or anyone in it.

I can see the "My Team" attitude toward say a high school team where the kids playing are at least partially in it for the community. But still mostly to show off and get laid (at least the male teams).

I guess it feeds a primal need to belong to "A Team" and fight against a shared enemy.

"My team" in the NHL are the Flames. But that's because my brother's team was the Oilers (this was back in the Gretzky days), and I needed to be contrarian. I don't really care, any longer.

Being the Flames, not sure anybody can blame you.

Hey! Honestly, I was never really into watching hockey. I didn't really "get" hockey 'til I started playing (and I've been on empegbbs longer than I've been playing), so I'm marginally more interested than I was back then, but not so much I have "my" team. When it comes to the NHL, I just cheer for whichever Canadian team is still in the playoffs. Contrast that with my uncle, who had a TV out in the barn so he wouldn't miss Hockey Night in Canada while he was milking the cows.