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CNN NEWSROOM
58 Million Americans in the Path of Storm; Flights Canceled Ahead of Storm; Drone Found on White House Grounds; NYC Officials Bracing for Blizzard
Aired January 26, 2015 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: NEWSROOM starts now.
And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.
Historic and life-threatening. This could be the storm that millions of Americans will talk about decades from now. Hours before this blizzard explodes over the northeast, we're only seeing the first gentle hints of what's to come.
Snowflakes nearly whiting out the cameras in Pittsburgh. And for New Yorkers, a slight shift in the storm's path could mean the difference between a few inches of snow or being buried under a couple of feet. New York's mayor is sounding the alarm.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK: This literally could be one of the top two or three largest storms in the history of this city. And we need to plan accordingly. So my message to all New Yorkers is prepare for something worse than we have seen before. Prepare to be safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Up the coast, the Cape Cod area is boarding up, like it's hurricane season. And there's a reason for that. Ferocious howling winds could reach hurricane levels.
We're covering all the angles of this dangerous storm that's unfolding. CNN cruiser fanned out across the northeast. But let's begin with meteorologist Chad Myers. He's live near Central Park in New York.
You look cold, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I am freezing, Carol. They wouldn't let me go get my storm gear for this hit. So I'm standing out here in a suit and this little coat. You know, they don't sell great, they don't sell great coats in Atlanta. They sell them up here. Anyway, I digress.
You know, yesterday I saw people standing in line, hundreds deep, trying to get bread and water and food and all -- and milk. Those who even want to hear a fairway market up here on 74th Street. I went up there, people were carrying food out that were unpaid for. They were carrying it out to go stand in line, to go -- get in line on the outside of the store to get back inside of the store to get to the cash register to finally leave.
There were at least 150 people deep in this cue just to go buy food. And this is why. We are seeing snow here already and the snow is going to come down significantly tonight. About 10:00 we could even see I would say thunder snow. So it's snowing here, it's snowing in Philadelphia, snowing in Atlantic City. A little bit of snow around Baltimore. But that's not the big stuff. This storm is about to hit the Atlantic Ocean.
And although it's not a hurricane there, we're not talking temperatures in the 80s, we're talking about temperatures in the 40s. That the warm water is going to make this storm balm. It is going to get very big, it's going to get very ferocious, it's going to -- the low pressure is going to get deeper and the winds are going to churn up and the snow is going to get deep. And there you go. Between 12 and 24 inches here.
More to the northeast of here as the snow almost makes ocean effect snow. The cold air going to wrap around the storm and blow this snow on land, so into Vermont, New Hampshire, into the Berkshires, and even back here in the New York City, a big snow event with big wind. Probably where I'm standing here tomorrow you may not see the 20 inches of snow as forecast. It may be seven foot drifts and then the rest you can see the ground. That's how ferociously these winds are going to be blowing -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Chad, I have a cute hat you can borrow. I'll bring it out to you.
(LAUGHTER)
MYERS: I'm going to my hotel right now to gear up.
COSTELLO: You better go fast because we need you back here.
Thank you, Chad.
Let's head to Boston now. Jennifer Gray, those snow already fallen in Boston, people say, Boston, they're used to that. But this is something different, isn't it, Jennifer?
JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. This is something entirely different. You know, they're comparing to it the President's Day blizzard of '03, saying it could be somewhere in the ballpark of that. You don't know if we're going to get more snow than that, at about 27 inches, but we could come close.
And you're right, snow already on the ground. They had a snowstorm just a couple of days ago. And we also have piles of snow, you know, when they plow and you see the piles of snow along the streets, we're seeing anywhere from one to two feet of that, but just on the grassy areas we're seeing about an inch or two. We're talking about snow up to my waist with this storm system.
We're going to see anywhere from two to three feet of snow. We're going to see snow drifts above my head. That lowest branch up there is about nine or 10 feet. And we're talking about eight foot snow drifts. And so we're going to see snow all over this city and piled along the streets, could go above my head. That's why those front loaders are ready, the trucks are ready to try to haul this snow out and put it into some of those farm fields.
So we have about 700 trucks ready to go here in the city of Boston. 35,000 tons of salt. They are ready. The mayor says we've dealt with blizzards before, we're ready for this one, of course. Only time will tell how bad it will actually get. We're forecasting the worst of it, Carol, to be between the overnight hours tonight into the first half of tomorrow morning, into midday, we could see an inch or two throughout the day today and then really start to pick up this afternoon.
We're going to see power outages possible so people need to be ready today and get off the road by this evening -- Carol.
COSTELLO: All right. Thanks for the warning, Jennifer Gray reporting live from Boston.
Air travelers, no surprise here, flight delays are now into the thousands. The crippling conditions beginning to make their mark. According to FlightAware, at last check, nearly 2700 flights are running on delays right now. More than 2300 have already been cancelled. More than 2,000 flights have already been cancelled for tomorrow.
Rene Marsh is at LaGuardia this morning. Good morning, Rene.
RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You know, it's bad news for people who are looking to travel by air. We're here at LaGuardia. And this is what the departure and arrival board looks like at this point. We're seeing it light up quite a bit, as the morning draws on. We're talking about cancellations, we're talking about delays.
And you hear us talk about this all the time. The ripple effect. So even if you're flying to sunny Miami you even may have to worry about delays because again, when it comes to this bad weather, it's all about the ripple effect.
The lucky people who are able to get on board, you see them, they are all traveling down there. That's the gateway to get on board the plane. But you mentioned there, thousands and thousands of flights already cancelled. Same scenario for tomorrow.
We do have the top three airports seeing the most cancellations. LaGuardia is one of them, with more than 500 cancellations in and out of the airport. Followed by Newark, that's more than 400 cancellations and delays in and out of the airport as well as JFK. So you get the trend here, all of the northeast airports really getting hammered as it relates to air travel. So what are the major airlines doing? They're allowing people to re-
book. If you're traveling during these days, you're able to do that free of charge. If you -- if you really need to get some place, the train is another option. Amtrak at this point says that they are operating on a regular schedule. By the way, that's how I got here to LaGuardia Airport without any issues. But of course the really rough stuff is going to happen later on this afternoon.
I just spoke with one air traffic controller. He describes the situation in the tower upstairs here at LaGuardia Airport as hectic simply because, you know, whenever you have these icy conditions, whenever you have snow, you have precipitation, you want to make sure that the flights are spaced out. Also you want to be mindful of the tarmac and that the conditions are OK for landing.
So even air traffic controllers saying here at LaGuardia things are hectic and it's only just beginning -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And the wind is a factor, too, right? Because the wind gusts are -- the wind gusts, rather, are already strong.
MARSH: Right. And so yes. You have so many different factors here that they have to look out for and that's why we saw so many airlines already proactively canceling their flights. Because what they don't want is a scenario where you have people sleeping in chairs, sleeping on cots in the airport because they come here and they find out their flight is cancelled.
So what we saw a lot of airlines do this time around is get proactive, cancel it long before the storm comes in, so that their planes aren't getting stuck at LaGuardia, in Boston, or wherever this storm starts really to hit hard -- Carol.
COSTELLO: All right. Rene Marsh, reporting live from LaGuardia this morning. Thank you.
Millions of Americans are bracing for historic blizzard conditions and some are better prepared than others.
How do you deal with winter weather? Do you stock -- do you stuck up with enough bread and toilet paper? Are you ready for cabin fever?
Here's what some Americans are saying today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't like shoveling, I don't like snow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to get hit with a big one. Just maybe the one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks beautiful as long as it doesn't get too close. The waves.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got one shovel that's good, one that's broken.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only thing we promised to do after the last year's storm was get a generator, and I didn't do it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait until the last minute was the thing to do, and then you get to come here and meet all these nice people that's doing the same exact thing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I should just lock myself in the house.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will believe it when I see it, I guess. I'm hoping maybe it won't be as bad as they say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: You're taking a look at the city of Philadelphia, where light snow is coming down but Philadelphia is going to hit hard, too, maybe six or seven or eight inches.
Ooh, let's go to State College in Pennsylvania and take a look at what's happening there. They're getting ready, too. You see the roads are already very icy because it's very cold all along the northeast. In fact the wind gusts, it's making it kind of unbearable. And the wind chill, it's single digits, especially here in New York City. It is cold outside. So be very careful.
I want to head now, though, to Washington, D.C. and the bizarre scene at the White House, where the Secret Service is investigating a small drone found on the property. The president and Mrs. Obama are both away. They're traveling in India but the incident will likely raise fresh concerns about the first family's security.
CNN's Joe Johns is in Washington. He joins me now with more.
Good morning, Joe.
JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. within the last hour and a half we saw a number of United States Secret Service officers in what is essentially a grid search here on the property, the White House lawn. They're looking for any other evidence of that device that landed on the lawn today. They had to wait until daylight.
Now earlier, during the hours of darkness, there were a number of emergency vehicles here as that device was first discovered. We don't know a lot about it. It's been described as small. We don't know how small. Of course it's a drone so it would have had propellers on it.
No indication that that device had any type of payload or was a danger to anyone in any way who's here at the White House.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, traveling with the president in India, talked about it earlier today. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: A device that has been recovered by the Secret Service at the White House. Early indications are that it does not pose any sort of ongoing threat right now to anybody at the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNS: Nothing from the United States Secret Service on this. As you know, they are under new management and there have been concerns about security here. The president and his wife, of course, traveling in India. As we understand it, their daughters and their grandmother remained back here in Washington. Carol.
COSTELLO: So, how far onto the White House grounds is this drone? Do we know?
JOHNS: It's not quite clear. We do know the search occurred directly behind me. The fence line all the way across through the trees is where the U.S. Secret Service officers were walking in their grid search. They also checked some of these bushes behind me to see if there was anything there. No indication from them they found anything at all, Carol. So perhaps that drone was just it but it would be good to get a statement from them.
COSTELLO: Yes, it would. Joe Johns reporting live from the White House this morning. Thank you.
I'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Ah, doesn't that look beautiful? Pretty benign right now, right? That's a shot of Central Park -- well, near Columbus Circle, near Central Park in New York City. But for millions of New Yorkers, the next several hours will be agonizing. If an approaching blizzard shifts slightly, the city could escape with several inches of snow. But a direct hit could be one of the worst storms in the city's history with two feet of snow and an avalanche of problems.
Katherine Garcia is the commissioner of the city's sanitation department. She's in the hot seat. She joins us now by phone. Good morning.
KATHERINE GARCIA, COMMISSIONER, NYC DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION (via telephone): Good morning, thank you for having me.
COSTELLO: Thanks for being on. On a scale of 1 to 10, what's your stress level at this point?
GARCIA: So far it's been OK. I think it was because I was out in the field early this morning with the front line sanitation workers and they were really confident and really excited to get a jump on this storm. So we are in full battle mode and ready to take on this blizzard, which could be historic.
COSTELLO: So when you say full battle mode, how many vehicles are you talking about? GARCIA: We have pushed beyond our maximum plan and we will have 2,300
sanitation vehicles out there as well as another almost 250 pieces of equipment from other agencies and vendors.
COSTELLO: What will be the hardest bit? Like, you know, the wind gusts are going to be the big thing, right, so you can get these giant snow drifts. What -- how will you remove it? How will you deal with that?
GARCIA: The biggest challenge for us we anticipate being on the overnight when we have what's called thundersnow and we will see 2-4 inches an hour and near whiteout conditions. That is incredibly difficult for anyone who's sitting on a plow or sitting in a spreader, being able to see and keep everything moving. For us, it's about just staying with it and doing it over and over and over again until we get everything cleared.
COSTELLO: And what would you like to tell the citizens of New York City in order to make your job easier?
GARCIA: The most important thing is to really not be driving, particularly as we go into this evening and overnight. We really need those roads to ourselves to have an ability to get them clear in a timely manner.
COSTELLO: Why do people do that, do you think? Why do they drive when they know blizzard conditions are approaching?
GARCIA: Well, I have some theories on that. You know, some people have a lot of SUVs and think they can take on the mountain. Some people have jobs that don't give them a lot of flexibility about getting in. But I really want to encourage people to treat this as a dangerous storm.
COSTELLO: There was some criticism the last time a big snowstorm hit New York City that the wealthier people weren't taken care of but the poorer people were? Is that going to be a problem this time around, if indeed that happened the last time around?
GARCIA: The department in the past and in the present is always really focused on developing our plans by the numbers. So it's all about your lane miles of highway, your lane miles of primary streets, that might have hospitals or precincts on them. And that's where we put our resources first. So there's no -- we don't look at the demographics of the city. It's about what are the key institutions, and then it's about to topography. If you're on a high elevation or hill, we are going to hit you first because those are the most difficult for us to stay ahead of.
COSTELLO: So there is a slight chance that the storm will move east and miss New York City altogether. So I'm sure that's what you're hoping for, but from what -- I know you've been looking at weather forecasts. What are you seeing?
GARCIA: This would be a day I would like the meteorologists to be wrong, but we are still looking at a projection of 12-24 inches across the city with blizzard-force winds. That may be a little bit down from when they were saying up to 3 feet yesterday. But that will be historic. We will -- that would still be a top 10 storm.
COSTELLO: Man, I hope that thing moves east. And I'm with you -- I hope the meteorologists are wrong. Katherine Garcia, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.
GARCIA: Pleasure to be with you.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a blizzard bears down. Worried homeowners board up. We'll talk to one of them next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.
This morning more than 20 million Americans are under a blizzard warning that blankets the northeast. Even as the first snowflakes fall in New York, the city has mobilized its sanitation workers and shifted their focus to snow removal. New York's mayor is warning this storm could be historic, with up to 20 inches.
The Cape Cod area could also be in real danger today. It could suffer three feet of snow. President Obama is halfway around the world, but even in India, he's being briefed on just how serious this weather threat is. The White House says he will be updated as the blizzard intensifies tonight.
Airlines are not waiting. They've already canceled some 1,800 flights in and out of the northeast. They've canceled nearly as many flights for tomorrow. And airlines are waiving the normal fees to reschedule flights, and that's a good thing.
As I said, New York City among the cities expected to be the hardest hit by the storm. Officials are already preparing. Joining me now on the phone, the city's emergency management commissioner, Joseph Esposito. Welcome, sir. Are you there?
JOSEPH ESPOSITO, NYC EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COMMISSIONER (via telephone): Yes. I'm here. Good morning.
COSTELLO: Oh good. Good morning. Thank you because I know you're busy this morning and I appreciate your being with me.
ESPOSITIO: No problem.
COSTELLO: Your job is to coordinate disaster response. What's your big challenge today?
ESPOSITO: Moving about three feet of snow, I think that will be the biggest challenge for today, and keeping the citizens of this city safe.
COSTELLO: I just interviewed Katherine Garcia. She said the biggest challenge will be the thundersnow that will happen late tonight. Thundersnow can mean 2-4 inches of snow per hour.
ESPOSITO: Well, yes, Sanitation is going to have their hands full trying to keep up with this. They can plow these streets. We have a lot of equipment. But if it comes down multiple inches every hour, they're going to have trouble keeping up with it. But, again, the biggest challenge for us is moving this snow and making sure the citizens of the city are safe.
COSTELLO: So if that much snow falls, where do you put it in New York City?
ESPOSITO: It's a big city. We'll find spots. But you'll see the piles on some of these big streets, we'll make piles. We have melters that we can bring in and they'll pile this snow into these melters and we melt it.
