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Elmer Vidal was just getting ready to leave his home Monday morning when near-disaster struck.

A 30-foot weeping willow in his front- yard at the corner of Emory and Forest streets in Attleboro toppled across his car and pickup truck and onto the three-decker next door.

"I saw the tree coming down. Thank God I was not in the car backing up," Vidal, 41, said while surveying the damage, which included a splintered wooden fence separating his driveway from the three-decker.

"It was very windy," Vidal recalled six hours after the incident at 6:30 a.m., which left his home without power. He had to get a portable generator to pump water out of his basement.

The toppled tree was one of many in the Attleboro area felled along with power lines during a Patriot's Day nor'easter, which dumped 2.75 inches of rain and whipped up 55 mph wind gusts. Power was knocked out to 2,175 electric customers in Attleboro, 842 in Rehoboth, 191 in Seekonk, 29 in Norton, 62 in Wrentham and two in Plainville, according to David Graves, a spokesman for National Grid.

"The winds were high enough during the night to tear wires down, but we've also had problems with tree limbs and trees coming down," Graves said.

Steele Lightbody, owner of the damaged three-decker at 92-94 Emory St., said one of his tenants left the house about 15 minutes before the tree fell.

Tree branches knocked in a window, knocked off some siding and damaged a porch. Lightbody said he did not know the repair costs.

"It didn't hurt anybody - that's the biggest thing," Lightbody said. "It's a mess, but you deal with what happens."

Elsewhere, in the Attleboro area, the picture was much the same.

The wind-whipped rain picked up around 4 a.m., sending branches flying before the wind died down about four hours later. The drenching, however, flooded basements throughout the area.

Ryan Benharris, of 3 Sully Lane, North Attleboro, suffered the impact of both flooding and whipping winds. He woke up once every hour during the night to clear out water in his basement, but discovered the storm's worst impact Monday morning.

An enormous tree - the only healthy one on his lot - had crashed down on his 2006 Toyota Camry sedan overnight, dealing severe damage to the car and leaving him without a way to get to work.

Benharris said he heard "a really loud crash" while in bed, but was so exhausted from the flooding that he did not investigate the source. "To say the least," he mused, "Mother Nature was not kind to me."

Still, the area seemed to escaped the serious flooding along the South Coast and Southern Rhode Island, or the devastation seen along the East Coast as the storm system moved northward.

City workers were on alert until after midnight Monday to head off potential flooding, but nothing serious occurred, Public Works Superintendent John Clover said.

Water levels at trouble spots like Oak Square and Tomlinson Road were monitored regularly, as was the level of the Ten Mile River.

"I think we escaped the brunt of it," Clover said.

Clover said the long, steady rain allowed water to run off as it fell. Heavy downpours would have caused more flooding.

He and Mayor Kevin Dumas inspected the Ten Mile Monday morning. The river was high, but not out of its banks.

"It was near capacity, but it was not flooding," he said.

In North Attleboro, North Attleboro Electric General Manager James Moynihan reported scattered outages, and said power had been restored to homes by 11:30 a.m.

"We've had a very, very limited number of outages from the winds from around 6 a.m. The power losses were very isolated, and we're just finishing up with work now," Moynihan said about 10:30 a.m.

Mansfield Road in North Attleboro was among the streets affected when a large tree took down a primary power line, Moynihan said. Police had to close off the road until repairs.

Other streets with outages included Landry Avenue, Mount Hope Street, Elmwood Street and Horace Darling Drive.

On Park Street, near LaSalette Shrine, a large tree that had rotted over the years finally came down. Fortunately, it did not fall across the well-traveled road.

Police had to direct traffic around Gilbert-Perry Square because of traffic lights that were out at Pleasant and Emory streets.

Fencing around Corliss Condominiums, a housing development under construction at the former Roberts Ford auto dealership on West Street near North Avenue in Attleboro, blew down from the overnight winds.

A section of Oak Hill Avenue near Briggs Corner was closed because tree limbs fell across it, nearly toppling utility poles with it.

In Wrentham, a 75-foot tree on the town common fell across Common Street. The tree, which was 4 feet wide at the base, was home to a dray of squirrels, which survived.

In Norton, police had to block several streets after trees and wires toppled. Trees fell on Janet and Burt streets, in the area of 202 Bay Road, the area of 26 Newcomb St. and on Elm and Reservoir streets.

"We really lucked out. There were no direct hits. Even with river flooding, we've been holding pretty well," Norton Fire Chief Richard Gomes said.