I am on the Gulf Coast in Mobile. I am not on the beaches but far enough inland that all we've gotten so far are some gusty winds and a little rain out of the outer bands. Tonight could be rough....we'll see!!

Hurricanes and tropical storms for that matter are NOT FUN. Went through Irene last year. Outside hurricane prepping, flooded basements, rotting food, and no power for a week stinks. And I had gas and water, but many lost that too. After two years of freak storms and extented outages, we got our own generator. One positive thing was that neighbors were really helping each other!

I guess the worst will come through tonight. I don't have a generator; wouldn't know how to operate it if I did. When Ivan came through in 2004, we were without power for 7+ days. I have gas stove and hot water heater so cooking and baths were available, but no air conditioning was miserable. It's so humid after the rain moves through. Then there's all the debris to pick up. You're right about the neighbors - they all pull together. One lady cleaned out her freezer, cooked it up and invited anyone who wanted to come eat!

Bama, I hope you can keep your electricity through this. I'll be watching.

I live in the tornado belt of Alabama and spent a week without electricity after the storms of April '11. I thought that the sounds of chain saws, heavy equipment, and generators would never cease.

I agree...our neighborhood practically turned into a commune during that time. Share and share alike was the mantra. It was kinda nice....we even had a brand new-born baby to pass around that week, lol.

Good luck, all! I hate it when these storms come through, even if they miss me. I went through Ike and didn't have electricity for 2 weeks. Had gas and water, though.

We'll be getting some rain from Isaac (I'm in Houston), but hopefully no more than that.

I hope everyone in the path is safe from Isaac!

We had quite a bit of cloud cover yesterday and were supposed to have rain most of the day but hardly got a drizzle. Today we ended up only getting about 10 minutes of heavy rain - and that was it for the day. It was actually very sunny and extremely hot.

I hadn't watered my outside plants since Sunday, in anticipation of them being drenched today (and they had a bit of rain yesterday and it was cooler & overcast) - today a few pots were rather wilty. Of course about 20 minutes after I watered them is when we had the quick rain blow through. It wasn't enough to have watered them, so it didn't make my watering unnecessary.

I saw rain coming toward us Monday and put many pots off of the porch to get rained on, but that didn't happen and I had to move them back yesterday so they didn't get sunburned. At noon yesterday I gave up and hosed down the thirsty pots well. Got in the shower about 4 pm, it was sunny. When I got out it was sprinkling but wasn't enough to accumulate in my rain-catching buckets at all, but hopefully enough to keep ground plants from wilting flat for a couple more days. Iffy with all of this hot wind. It's move so far west, I think that's probably it as far as feeling the effects here, except for these wind gusts that persist.

Maybe it'll keep going northwest and rain on places that really need it!

Well, it is finally over, with the worst of it moving through last night. We got over 7" of rain and gusty wind but no major damage to trees and landscaping in my area. No loss of power either. That is always my greatest fear when the weather is so hot and sticky! Seems like we dodged the bullet this time...again.
Purple, I agree, maybe some of that rain will move on into to Midwest where they can really use it.

Bama,

Glad to hear you got through it ok. 7" of rain is a lot but not unmanageable.

How did everyone else do?

Larry