[Bernadette]

Chris, call us & let us know status.....we worry!!

The Deshutes is about level with the walking path........hows the Sats?

FYI:

Most major roads in southwestern Washington's Grays Harbor and Pacific counties were closed, and virtually all roads into the coastal city of Aberdeen were cut off, officials said.

"In 30 years of law enforcement, it's as bad as I've ever seen," said Grays Harbor County Sheriff Michael J. Whelan, whose own truck was smashed in his driveway by a falling tree.

Telephone and other communications were so tenuous that it was impossible to determine how many people were forced out of their homes, said Abby Kershaw of Oregon Emergency Management.

Amateur radio operators said they were trying to help with communications as Oregon's Columbia, Clatsop and Tillamook counties experienced spotty or absent telephone service.

Pacific Power reported 40,000 homes without power in Oregon, and it could be days before electricity is fully restored, the utility said. Transmission poles 100 feet tall were toppled, and large sections of lines lay on the ground.

"The ground is saturated from intensive rainfall and trees are leaning into power lines and dropping to the ground," the utility said in a statement.

The Grays Harbor County Public Utility District in Washington reported 33,000 customers without electricity. Two of the utility's workers were injured, one seriously, when a windblown tree hit their lift truck bucket, sheriff's deputy David A. Pimentel said. Repair crews were pulled off the streets early Monday because of the hazard, utility officials said.

The Weather Service issued flood warnings in Oregon for seven coastal rivers and two inland. The storms curtailed state government functions, as driver's license and employment offices in Columbia County filled with flood waters.

In southwestern Washington, one man died when a tree fell on him as he was trying to clear one that had been toppled, said Grays Harbor County Sheriff Ed McGowan. Another died of a medical problem after the power went out, he said.

More than 3 inches of rain fell in six hours Monday morning at Shelton and Bremerton, Washington, the Weather Service said. That brought Shelton's 30-hour total to 5.72 inches.

"There's nothing. You can't get in or out," homeowner Yvonne Powers said in the southwest Washington town of Pe Ell, on the Chehalis River.

In Olympia, the rain turned a small creek into a roiling, muddy surge that tore through a wall at the Ranch House BBQ. Tables and booths were strewn across the street, and a storage shed was pushed about 300 feet away.

Christy Romo, who lives just uphill from the restaurant, said she could hear the floodwaters coming and started packing before the first floor of her cabin was inundated.

"I knew I wouldn't have much time," Romo said. "I heard a bang, and then saw the water rising quickly."

In Oregon, the twin systems fell most heavily on the northern part of the coast, where crabbers hoping to get the first of the season's Dungeness crabs stayed in port.

The Coast Guard station in Astoria lost communication with its command center, and the service launched a C-130 Hercules plane from Sacramento, California, to patrol the northern coast and handle distress calls.

The high winds snapped a 206-foot Sitka spruce that had shared honors with one in Washington for the nation's largest. It had attracted 100,000 visitors a year.

"The tree will now die," state forester Paul Ries said. "It's a sad event, but not unexpected. It's part of the natural cycle of the tree."

People in the Midwest began bracing for the Northwest systems to move their way even as they dug out from a storm that hampered travel over the weekend. That system moved into the Northeast on Monday and has been blamed for more than 15 deaths, mostly in traffic accidents.