The rain has stopped, or at least slowed down, which has allowed cleanup to begin. Marblemount received a little over 7 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. This in addition to the approximately four feet of snow on the ground; about ten inches of that melted. All of that is a LOT of water. Generally it all soaks in, but coming so fast it mostly ran off. Which caused a lot of damage.
An aerial view of the Skagit river with Hwy. 20 on the right.
One of the mudslides that covered the highway. This one is about 15 miles west (downriver) of the ranch.
In addition to covering the road with mud, trees and debris, the slides took out the power poles and lines. You can just see a little of the line dangling like a necklace in the bottom of the picture.
So, the power has been out since Tuesday for everyone east of this slide. That includes Rockport and Marblemount and everyone else upriver from here.
The crews are working on clearing the roadway, but the hillsides are still saturated and very unstable.
The optimistic estimate is another two weeks until the road is open and power is restored.
In the meantime, it is a good thing we have a generator! Our friends have been over to our place and checked on it for us. They started the generator which will allow our freezer (full of food) and refrigerator to run for a few hours. Hopefully it will be enough to keep all the food from spoiling.
In addition to the big mudslides, there are several places where the creeks or rivers just washed over the road. In some places all the pavement must be replaced as the water washed out the ground under the roadway.
The good news is that the ranch and our buildings are all high and pretty dry and were not damaged by the flooding. A lot of folks in that area were not nearly so fortunate.
Wow! We just have fog…no rain or snow. Drive safe.