They awoke on the first morning of their tropical honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to find their hotel initiating emergency procedures. What began as casual pool chatter the previous afternoon about a potential storm had morphed into the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.

As they crawled out of bed Friday, newlyweds Travis Stanton and Dave Larson, of Rochester, spotted workers bulldozing sand on the beach to build a barrier between the ocean and their resort, Velas Vallarta. Furniture had disappeared from the lobby, and all the pictures were stripped off the walls. Hurricane Patricia was coming.

The storm roared to life in the warm waters over the Pacific, building in intensity so quickly that many were caught off guard. Patricia approached the coast packing winds in excess of 200 miles per hour. Frantic messages from Stanton's loved ones, including his sister, warned him about the massive size of the approaching storm. "Everyone was saying, 'You just have to get out of there!' " said Stanton, who was led out with his husband and other tourists to higher ground Friday afternoon.

"There was this undertone of concern and awareness that something significant could happen at any moment. The thought goes through your head: This could be really serious. People could die."

Initial reports Saturday indicated the impact of the storm was not as severe as many had feared, and there was no word of fatalities. Hurricane Patricia largely spared the densely populated centers of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, doing the most damage to small villages between the two cities.

With Puerto Vallarta's airport closed, Stanton and Larson were forced to wait out the storm. Buses transported resort guests a mile inland to a government refuge center at a local college, where the honeymooners waited inside a classroom with strangers for seven hours. Twitter and Facebook messages allowed Stanton to update family back home.

Travis Stanton, of Rochester, shot this snap of their evacuation room, not exactly the honeymoon suite they had hoped for.

From Minnesota, friends and relatives of those affected by the hurricane clung to social media for information on their well-being.

Ivan Gil, a Mexican-American student at the University of Minnesota, furiously switched between his online accounts Friday searching for messages from friends who were trapped in Patricia's path. His family was safe on the opposite coast in Vera Cruz, but several of his friends were in Puerto Vallarta.

Power was turned off much of the day in that region, making it almost impossible to reach anyone.

"It's very scary because you can see cars being moved with the air," said Gil, who spent Friday hunched over his computer hitting refresh. "A lot of people don't know what to do in this type of emergency. This is something that people were not ready for."

To ease her uncertainty, Maria Elena Narez Mendoza invited nearly 20 relatives over to her Crystal home for a prayer circle after calls to family members in Mexico went unanswered Friday.

Group members passed around a rosary as they watched the television, flipping between CNN and Univision — hoping one channel might give them a scrap of promising information on those who had been radio-silent.

Mendoza's father, ailing and in his 70s, lives in rural Puerto Vallarta. His home has no windows and no protection. Her sisters wouldn't fare much better in the nearby state of Nayarit, she said, and none of them have been in contact since the storm made landfall.

"If people there have just a little bit, they may be left with nothing," Mendoza worried.

Rain battered Stanton's hotel, but did little more than flood the pool, he said. They were returned to their rooms safely the same night.

"If you arrived at this hotel today, you'd have absolutely no idea what happened yesterday," Stanton said Saturday morning. "Today our plan is to drink hurricanes instead of dodge hurricanes."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Liz Sawyer • 612-673-4648