happening now. a monster blizzard pounds the northeast. just not where people thought. >> from new york to boston and beyond we have the latest on what mother nature brought and where she's headed now. >> plus what is going on with wall street? the dow is down more than 360 points and falling. the warning signs you need to know about this morning. good very snowy morning from us in this nice warm studio with images of snowy behind us. i'm kate bolduan. >> i'm john berman. the big, bad blizzard of 2015 is in fact both of those things big and bad, in some places. just not where everyone expected it. >> right now at 11:00 eastern, the storm and the story is in new england. a blizzard warning is in effect for parts of massachusetts and

rhode island. lots of snow on the ground. 25 inches in some places. and the big important thing to remember it's still coming down. the story is not over. wind gusts near hurricane force have knocked out power in places like nantucket island. there are travel bans state emergencies and warnings about coastal flooding for millions of people. >> new york city and new jersey got snow but really did avoid the worst of it. officials here have lifted the travel ban. they did that earlier this morning. later this hour we'll hear from new york mayor bill de blasio. there have been predictable moaning and groaning he overreacted by suspending train and bus service. he's sure to face poignant questions about that and we're waiting to hear from rhode island's governor where the situation is vastly different. >> alexandra field, we'll get to her. and jennifer gray is in boston just getting walloped and chad

myers is tracking every bit of the move of this storm for us this morning. new york's mayor, bill de blasio said he thinks they dodged a bullet and storm is nothing like they feared it would be. that's just in the city proper if you will. areas to the north and east are very different story. meteorologist chad myers is tracking all of it. chad where is the storm hitting now? you've been following it all night. >> we'll call it new england. eastern long island and new england. moving away from new york city and tri-state. we'll take a look at what models said and what we said and what the new model, the new and improved multimillion dollar improvement national weather service model would have said had we listened to it. there's the snow in boston and cape all of the way back down and snow into the hudson river valley. this is about done. this is about done for new york. a couple spots may get another inch or two but the big snow will be where jennifer gray is. a few more inches to go there on

eastern long island a few more inches to go there and winds are blowing. windchill right now is four below zero. feels like that to you and to your pets. please make sure they are inside today. look at the winds. nantucket just last hour 64 miles per hour. there's no power. that gets cold. 30 miles an hour in boston making a ground blizzard there. there is some snow to come. i'm thinking this is probably still too much. maybe 6 to 12 in a lot of these areas that say 12 to 24. same story models had problems with yesterday. they were simply saying too much. this is the model that we should have listened to. the new and improved model called gfs. 6 to 8. maybe 10 for new york city. right on the money. off the eastern long island 12 to 24. right on the money. boston over two feet. that's what you're going to get. now we know. we took the new tesla out for a test drive and we liked it and now we'll keep the new model. >> boston is getting hit with

more than two feet of snow. there's a lot more snow to come even if it's not another two feet it's another 10 inches or more. they are in for it today and it's not done. >> this is the model we looked at. this is old faithful. this is the one we looked at for years and years. garbage in and garbage out. forecasters believed 24 inches in new york city. we should have leavebelieved the other one. it got boston right and not new york. there are complainers in new york. you're off work? >> you can complain in the comfort of your own home. >> someone said there are a lot of complainers in new york no matter what the weather is and no matter what anybody does. thank you very much. chad is tracking it all for us this morning. >> this bad news here i was going to say is blizzard is pummeling parts of new england right now. it isn't nearly done. more than a foot of snow has fallen in boston. i saw snow totals shortly ago over two feet already in parts of massachusetts. way over one foot right now. they could get up to another foot by tonight as chad just

said. >> hurricane force gusts are a big part of this storm knocking out power to the entire island of nantucket. cottages flooded by battering surf at this moment. jennifer gray is in boston for us. you've been watching this storm develop overnight, jennifer. what have you seen? it's still clearly coming down right on top of you. >> reporter: i've never seen anything like this. the snow has been coming down at a rate of an inch per hour. we saw it come down heavily last night beginning around 6:00 or 7:00 and it has not let up since. we still have several hours to go. on top of that you get these incredible wind gusts that just carry the snow already on the ground and snow in the air and you cannot see anything. we have had wind gusts of 20 to 30 miles an hour out here. it will relax. you can see snow around me. you can barely see the harbor behind me. we've seen plows come through and they've done great job keeping roads clear. this is one of the roads that has only been plowed about once

and you can see all the snow that's piled up just since they've been up here an hour or two ago. it definitely adds up quickly. you were talking about those wind gusts. hurricane force wind gusts. we had a wind gust of 78 miles per hour recorded in nantucket and that's where you get the power outages. the entire island completely without power. luckily here in boston we haven't had wind gusts like that and so it's been keeping the winds at about 20 to 30 miles an hour strong enough that it's keeping the snow off the power lines and so we haven't seen that buildup which is good news. just to take you around a little bit, you can see very powdery snow out here and so when the wind blows, it carries it very easily and so that's where you get whiteout conditions. visibility less than a quarter of a mile. so we still have that travel ban in place here in massachusetts. that blizzard warning still in effect throughout the entire day today. so people are just encouraged to stay indoors so plows can get out there and keep those roads

clear. >> all right. jennifer gray on the streets of boston. you heard jennifer gray say she's never seen anything like this. the snow falling has been going on for hours and hours and hours. >> slow moving storm. that's one of the biggest parts about this. >> more to come. now, it's bad in boston. it's worse down on cape cod as you head down out to the coastal areas down there. alexandra field is headed down toward the cape right now. what are you seeing? >> reporter: hey, john. we just left boston and we're on 93 heading south to the south shore area that you're talking about which is south of boston right down toward the cape. that should orientate our viewers a little bit. what's disorientating is when you look out the window of our rolling coverage vehicle here and you see there are practically no cars out here on 93. one car that just passed in the other lane. one car up in front of us. that's because this driving ban does remain in effect. conditions here expected to worsen into tomorrow. people are still being told to

stay off the roads. of course there is an exemption for media. we should point that out and emergency responders and all those snow removal teams are out on the roads. the speed limit was reduced on the mass pike to 40 miles an hour even for people considered critical to being out there. what we're hearing is that there were some issues with cars spinning out, jackknifing before roads were shut down overnight in the city of boston no major problems according to the mayor. we're heading south right now because it is the coastal areas that are an area of such big concern because of the high winds and because of the flooding and frankly they've already started to see it and they could see more of it as high tide approaches later this afternoon and into this evening. this is an area for people who live in the boston area. they are well aware of the flooding problems that happened down there. we know there have been evacuations. the national guard has been called into the south shore to do some evacuations in more of the highway flooded areas. john? >> that's amazing. that whole shot we saw two cars. one of them was a snowplow.

there's nobody on that road. i have never seen anything like that. you're on 93. for people that don't know that's a busy busy highway. alexandra field, remarkable. check back in with us when you get down closer to the water there on the cape. >> sounds like a good thing there's no one on the roads. media does get a special pass on this because we are allowed to be on the road to cover the story along with emergency vehicles of course. we also want to take a quick turn to other news that we're watching this morning. the dow is down more than 350 points. let's get a read on exactly what this means. what is driving this? a lot of conversation i'm hearing right away is oil prices. >> this is the flip side of the low oil prices. i was at the pump in phoenix. >> flip side good for us is bad for us. >> i was at the pump in phoenix a few weeks ago. it felt so good to only pay less than 1.90 a gallon but energy companies aren't spending as

much. we got an earnings report from caterpillar. they make manufacturing goods. they make a lot of equipment. what they're saying is their report was far less than expected because energy and oil companies now aren't buying the equipment from them. that's what's happening. it feels good at the pump. you don't want oil prices to go too low or it has a reverse effect and oil companies aren't investing. you want to have a middle point. >> we also have this global situation right now. in some ways americans don't know how good we have it right now. it's an island of economic stability relatively speaking to the rest of the world and dollar is doing funky things. everyone else's currency is doing funky things in relationship to the daughter.ollar. >> the dollar is strong but much like oil prices this can have a reverse effect. it means that our products in the united states are more expensive overseas so that's hitting company's bottom line like mcdonald's and coca-cola. if you want to plan a vacation to europe now is the time to do

it. the dollar is strong but if it lasts too long there can be unintended consequences. >> as we leave this story, throw up one graphic showing what a wild month it's been when you talk about the dow. this is just january so far. it's wild. >> on top of that microsoft had bad earnings report. windows isn't doing well. tonight we have apple reporting earnings and we know iphone 6 has done so well. maybe apple can give us a lift. >> help us once again. >> we wait until tomorrow with that whiplash back and forth. we'll get back to this monster storm? have you seen the pictures? we'll show you where the storm has been relentless. later on president obama sitting down with cnn's fareed zakaria. the president and fareed zakaria. fareed is here with details coming up. >> reporter: seeing accidents and people swerving going too fast and not judging how bad the

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it's what makes a subaru a subaru. some of the most remarkable pictures we've seen all morning long from this storm comes from long island. >> they are dealing with it in. is it better or worse right now? >> reporter: it's actually a little bit of reprieve from the snow. it's been snowing consistently here. if i can just demonstrate for

you how much snow is actually been accumulated. if i walk into this part of the deck here it's actually covering my boots entirely and i'm not even touching the floor of the deck. that means that we're at least 12 to 15 inches in and in certain parts of the deck you can see behind me it's much much higher. that's because of the significant wind gusts that we've had. it's just blowing the snow everywhere. the one good piece of good news in addition to the reprieve from the snow is actually visibility. if you look out here you can see the horizon in the ocean. i was not able to see this just a couple hours ago. actually this just happened about an hour ago. if you look at the waves, they actually calmed down. they were up to about 15 feet this morning. i'm looking out there and i'm seeing that they are quite calm. you mentioned surfers. one way of measuring how bad it is out here is whether the surfers come out. as you guys know surfers love when the ocean is this

turbulent. we'll check out for them later today. let me not underplay this. it's still very dangerous out here. we still have wind gusts and anything over 30 miles an hour for the wind is going to take down power lines. we already know about 130 people are without power today in suffolk county. we have our lovely workers out here shoveling and making some pathways for us. they've been at it all morning. that's a tough job. thank you so much sir. you know guys we're looking at the beach here. this is a very important part of the tourism business out here in montauk. there was talk originally about beach erosion. we haven't seen too much of it. i'll keep an eye out on power outages and other significant weather events out here. back to you in new york kate and john. >> it's interesting. she's 6'4". when she stands in that snow you

get a sense of how deep it. great job there all morning. >> she talks about surfing out there. i wouldn't wish that on my first enemy. >> i stood where she's standing for two hurricanes before. that area has been hit by the weather hard over the last two years. >> coming up next for us president obama is on his way back from his trip to india and a quick stopover in saudi arabia. that's one of the topics he discussed with fareed zakaria in an exclusive interview. also drones. what does the president think of the drone that crashed in his backyard? okay, listen up! i'm re-workin' the menu. mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! [ female announcer ] the complete balanced nutrition of great-tasting ensure. 24 vitamins and minerals antioxidants and 9 grams of protein. [ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition in charge™.

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new developments on the huge northeast blizzard in just a moment but right now president obama is about to head home from saudi arabia. he made a quick stop in the king kingdom to offer condolences in the death of king abdullah and sit down with sing salmanking salman. >> the president's decision to head to saudi arabia and personally pay his respects really does speak to the critical relationship between the united states and saudi arabia but that doesn't come without criticism. you brought that up to him. >> reporter: you know kate there are recent things that have happened. there's a blogger in saudi arabia who has been sentenced to a thousand lashes. there's the reality that women can't drive there. that a woman who wants to work there has to get permission of a

male. i think for many americans certainly there's a sort of puzzle. why are we so closely aligned with the regime that seems to backward? and the president was very up front in saying look we have security interests and we have issues that we have to do business with them on. essentially the fight against terrorism. he made no apologies for the fact that we're going to do business with them but he did say we will press them on human rights. we'll continue to do it in a consistent way. but not in a way that would overshadow or detract from the importance of maintaining a good relationship with them. saudi arabia right now is a kind of island of stability among the fires of the middle east. so i suspect that it has become pretty vital in those terms. >> the fact that he probably won't be bringing up or pushing it is going to be met by continued criticism by human

rights activists on this side and there as well. >> you had a chance to ask him about news that happened in his yard while he was gone. this small drone landed on the white house lawn. what did the president have to say about that? >> it was interesting. he deferred the actual incident to the secret service but then went on to talk about how this really opens up a whole new chapter that we have to figure out. he said this drone, the one that landed in the white house, could have been bought at radio shack. amazon is going to deliver parcels with drones they say. if this is going to be as widespread as it is going to be or seems to be we're going to have some rules of the road. he made an analogy to cyberwars and cyberspace that technology has gotten to a point where people can do stuff that we don't have any rules about. americans have been very interested to hear about this drone that landed in the white house backyard where you and

your family lives. are you confident that you understand how you would prevent the next one from being armed? >> well this is a broader problem. i'll leave the secret service to talk about this particular event. i've actually asked the faa and a number of agencies to examine how are we managing this new technology because the drone that landed in the white house you can buy at radio shack. you know that there are companies like amazon that are talking about using small drones to deliver packages. there are incredibly useful functions that these drones can play in terms of farmers who are managing crops and

conservationists who want to take stock of wildlife. so there are a whole range of things we can do with it. we don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all for it. so i assigned some of the relevant agencies to start talking to stakeholders and figure out how we're going to put an architecture in place that makes sure that these things aren't dangerous and they're not violating people's privacy and on some ways fareed this is similar to what's happened in cyberspace. these technologies that we're developing had the capacity to empower individuals in ways that we couldn't even imagine 10 15 years ago. >> i have to say, it didn't strike me that he was very worried about the fact that this drone had landed. his family lives in the white

house. this was in his backyard. i suspect that the briefing he received from the secret service didn't alarm him too much. kate john? >> as you said it does raise questions and he said as much as well. fareed zakaria just interviewed the president. if you want to see the entire interview that fareed did and there's so much more information that we can't even tell you right now, it's secret until sunday. you have to watch "fareed zakaria gps" sunday at 10:00. this just into cnn, it does appear that isis posted a new online threat. the terror group is vowing to kill japanese hostage kenji goto and a jordanian military pilot within the next 24 hours if jordan does not release convicted terrorists sagida al rishawi. she's the would-be suicide bomber whose device failed to detonate in a string of terror attacks back in 2005. she has been sentenced to death.

also in libya this morning, gunmen reportedly with ties to isis set off a car bomb just outside the corinthia hotel. they then shot their way up to the hotel's top floor. at least three people were killed. six injured in the attack according to libya state media. most guests and staff were evacuated to safety. a security spokesman does tell cnn three of the gunmen are still holed up in the hotel now surrounded by libyan forces. >> keep you posted on that. new this morning, what sure looks like a possible russian spy ring busted. the fbi arrested one russian national two others indicted for allegedly working as deep cover agents for moscow. all three reportedly tried to recruit city residents as intelligence sources hoping to gather details on sanctions against russia and development

of alternative energy sources. one of the suspects already appeared in u.s. federal court. the other two, both russian government employees, have fled authorities say, back to russia. >> and a candlelighting ceremony is under way at auschwitz concentration camp in southern poland. this is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the nazi concentration camp. live pictures right now from a place where 1 million people were killed 90% of them jewish. only 7,000 people were alive when the soviet army liberated the camp. over 1 million killed. a few hundred survivors are gathering there today along with heads of state and representatives from world war ii allies. >> one of the most important locations in the world as a reminder of what humans are capable of and not always good.

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the blizzard of 2015 just pounding new england right now. it will not let up until late tonight. more than a foot of snow well over a foot of snow already hit boston. they could get more than another foot. >> hurricane force wind gusts have knocked out power to the entire town of nantucket. the island off the coast of cape cod. there's coastal flooding which is expected to get worse as high tide hits. the good news is millions of people have heeded the warnings to stay home and off the roads. nearly 8,000 flights have been canceled. mostly in new york, boston, and philadelphia at this point. >> as we just said this hour massachusetts seems to be absorbing much of that storm's energy. life around boston frozen in place.

>> brooke baldwin is there frozen in place as well or not so much. brooke how is it looking? you have come across brave souls out in it with you. >> reporter: i know. i do. i was up here in boston for the weekend. they said stay in boston. we hear about snow that's about to happen. i said okay. so far i was out here until 1:00 in the morning. same story, different day. continues to come down and just let me show you trudging through it a little bit. it is just below my knee. i'm 5'9". about 18 inches. nantucket is the huge worry down the cape coastal flooding and pictures we've seen is tremendous. that's what we'll listen for when we hear from the governor in half an hour. he'll update us. the other part of the story -- hi, guys. i have whitney, grace and dave with me. what boston blizzard isn't complete without cross-country skiing. they live in the north end here

in the harbor. you compared this to the blizzard just two years ago? >> in 2013 right. very similar. the cross-country skiers and flag football players and otherwise just plows. this is why we live in new england. >> reporter: this is why you love new england. grace you were just saying no school today and -- >> no school today or tomorrow. >> reporter: what are you doing today while not in school? >> making a snow fort with my friends. >> reporter: this is wonderful. everybody in boston gets the snow. you were saying you all have been skiing on some of the streets and how have they looked that you've seen so far? >> think that they're doing a good job clearing the streets. it's not good for skiing but great for people who need access to their homes. >> reporter: thank you all very much. continue your skiing. so kate and berman -- bye, you guys. people here -- it's so quiet.

it's very rare. i was just walking through and it's a ghost town. again, i can't stress enough the issue. the cape nantucket, island of nantucket off the grid. we're talking 13,000 people without power. roughly statewide we hear about 35,000. that number continues to increase. so we'll watch for those numbers when we hear from the governor in just about 25 minutes from now. back to you guys in the nice warm studio. >> i want to watch you try to walk. i think we should give you 30 seconds of walking to show how much snow is on the ground there and how difficult it is to move around. >> reporter: it's incredible. just waking up this morning and we were up late last night and it just continues and jennifer gray one of our meteorologists was out here she was saying it's been coming down multiple inches an hour. you know when you think about a lot of people out here

remembering the blizzard of 2003 and that was a huge 27 inches. here in boston 18. half hour out of the city 30 numbers. >> head out the pike and they are getting 30 inches of snow. it's serious there. brooke baldwin, thank you for braving the storm for us. keep on walking. coming up next we'll head from boston and head up to rhode island hard hit rhode island where power outages, look at these winds. big part of the story. high winds are packing a punch this morning. >> i love it. i love the snow. i love driving in it. i love everything to do with it. >> roads are bad out here. a lot of snow. not the temperature this time. it's the snow. this third shift is rough... it's just a few more weeks max! what are you doing up? it's late.

i just wanted to have breakast wih you.

welcome back.

let's head over to rhode island now where the governor is giving an update on storm conditions and how that state is faring. it began just moments ago. >> let me give you an update. first, i want to say thank you to all of the people of rhode island who have heeded our call to stay home. the travel ban has been extremely successful allowing folks to plow the roads. very few accidents. no fatalities. nothing serious. thank you to the people of rhode island for hunkering down. let me give you a sense of what's happening and what we expect. i just got off of a plow. it is very bad. the roads are not safe. the snow is still coming down. several inches an hour. we still have wind gusts 40 miles an hour. visibility is very poor. the snow will continue to fall heavily throughout the

afternoon. we expect at least an additional five to six inches between now and 4:00 and 5:00. heavier bands may pass but we anticipate additional snow throughout the evening and the strong winds, 40 to 50-mile-an-hour will continue throughout the afternoon. high winds until 4:00 or 5:00 tonight. overall totals are about the same. about two feet around the state. it's going to be very cold tonight. now, we have to worry about windchills. minus 15 degrees with windchills this evening. d.o.t. department of transportation has over 400 vehicles out. they've been working through the night. again, roads are still not passable but we have 411 vehicles out there doing their job. the side roads and the onramps and off-ramps and intersections are particularly dangerous. i see all of the reporters nodding. you know what i'm talking about. take this seriously.

those side roads and intersections are very bad. d.o.t. is holding its own i would say. it continues to snow. we started this morning with just over 1,000 power outages. we are now down to 570 power outages. i just got off the phone -- >> that's the new governor of rhode island speaking there about the conditions in rhode island. she says it's bad right now. it's not safe to be out. they expect five to six more inches of snow and wind gusts 35 miles an hour or greater. she wants people to stay at home. it's interesting. in rhode island massachusetts, you have people who just became governor. just sworn in a few weeks ago. this is trial by fire. you have to really do the job

very very quickly. it's interesting to see. >> so far she thanked residents for heeding warnings and staying off the roads for very few accidents but looking to tonight, it's not over for a lot of new england. the storm is slow moving. it's still kind of sitting there and windchill is going to be a huge problem in rhode island tonight. negative 15 she says. they are concerned about that and they'll look into that. let's go to rhode island. we have our correspondents on the ground. more than 10 inches of snow have fallen where you are with several more coming throughout the afternoon and even into tonight. what are you seeing? >> reporter: it's actually pretty remarkable that they've had so few problems here in providence rhode island. i just interviewed the mayor. he said aside from a gas line fire they've been very lucky. they felt prepared for this and have not seen many problems. to give you an example, since the travel ban last night at

midnight there have been zero car accidents in this town. this road is completely snow covered. the snow is still falling. it's still very windy. still feeling strong wind gusts up against our faces as we stand out here. it is truly remarkable that they've had so few problems. another example, they have only about 90 customers without power in providence right now. the kind of snow that's falling is light and dry. also the mayor says they were very prepared for this. and people have been heeding the warning not to come out on the streets. only in the last maybe hour or so have we been seeing people actually coming out and braving this weather. they've been listening whereas in other towns people go out in the streets and play in the snow that's not the case here. it's very much a ghost town in

providence rhode island. >> two amazing things you just said there. one, you are standing in the middle of the road. we'll have to take your word for it because i see no evidence that. >> it looks beautiful but we keep saying it's dangerous. are you in the road or on the sidewalk? >> we are right in the middle of the road. i know it's whiteout conditions but that's actually a traffic light right there. this is the main square in providence rhode island. this is kennedy plaza. this would normally be bustling with commerce and tourists and people going to work. i'm right in the middle of the road. this is a park that are frequented by people. an ice rink over there that at times this morning we could barely see it. we were just a few feet away from it. that's how windy it's been. gusts are tropical storm force gusts. it's very apparent if you are standing out here that it's very windy and very cold. >> a car did just drive by. there is a road there. all right. >> he doesn't trust you for some

reason. >> the good news is only a few dozen people without power in the providence area. that is remarkable. whether you are in the middle of what's happening right now in the northeast or you're on the outside but you want to help, you can do so. logon to cnn.com/impact. we'll have the latest updates from government agencies good information on how to stay safe through the worst of this very big storm that is not over. the address is cnn.com/impact. coming up next for us being warned and being prepared for a monster storm. we'll take you inside the intense coordination discussions probably a lot of debate between states and federal government about how to handle a blizzard. when is the right time to pull the trigger, if you will on closures and on states of emergency. all of that ahead. >> pretty empty out here. it's funny for the streets of boston to be so empty. people seem like they are staying inside. >> it's nuts out here.

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typical in most parts of the city. still some snow happening today. we might pick up a few more inches. but obviously the worst is past. so put simply we got about half as much as what a lot of the projections had been or even under half as much. but, again, if you look at eastern queens where i was this morning, some parts of eastern queens got 10 inches of snow just literally 18 miles to the east in ronkonkoma, there were 20 inches of snow. so literally a quitsdistance of 18 miles, twice as much snow in that part of long island. farther out in suffolk, 20 inches already. there's no question how serious this is how serious it was projected to be and the kind of precautions that we had to take.

the good news is the people of this city understood how serious the threat was. they took the travel ban seriously. they got off the roads after 11:00 p.m. and that allowed the sanitation department to do an extraordinary job. i spent this morning in different parts of the city. i was out in bayside and howard beach, in jamaica center i was out in staten island and highland boulevard and other parts of staten island. what you saw was an extraordinarily effective response by the sanitation department. that is in no small measure because people did a great job of getting out of the way and helping sanitation to do what they do so well. they of course were out all night, nonstop. and they continue to work intensely to keep clearing the city up and getting us back to normal. recapping, at 7:30 a.m. today,

in coordination with the state of new york, we lifted the travel ban. staten island ferry was back up immediately at that point. the subway system the mta, as you've heard, quickly coming back to life. it will not get the full weekday capacity today. it will be the equivalent of a sunday schedule which is basically about 60% of normal capacity. now, the clean-up again under way, going well. but it's going to take today and into tomorrow to continue that clean-up. so the reminder to people is even though we didn't see the worst, it's still very cold out there. it's still very slippery. driving around you do need to take precautions. it will be slower. i saw a few accidents along the way as i was driving around this morning. people need to be careful. and the farther east you go in the city the more careful you have to be particularly eastern queens again, which bore the

brunt of what the city experienced. sanitation will be working nonstop -- >> that's the mayor of new york city mayor bill de blasio talking about the storm, how the city has weathered the storm, if you will. he said the roads are still dangerous and slippery. but this city was largely spared. it also has gotten him a little bit of criticism for maybe overdoing it, blowing it out of proportion, if you will. that brings up this discussion of what's the balance between preparing for a storm or blowing it out of proportion? let's bring in someone who will know these discussions. juliette kayyem. you've been involved in these discussions, the tuck and pull of when to shut down travel, when not to. how do you think the mayor fared? do you think he's deserves the flak he's getting for blowing this out of proportion since new york city didn't get hit so hard? >> not at all. you have to be guided by science and what the meteorologists are

telling you, all signs were that this was going to be very bad. for him to ignore it would have been complete negligence on his part. as the mayor, every single governor along new england followed suit, declaring emergencies. predicting storms and their intensity is an art, not a science. precipitation, weather, wind all play in and factor into the decisions that any mayor or governor is going to make and they make a judgment call. in this instance simply because the snow wasn't as high as we anticipated in new york city doesn't mean that the precautions and preparedness were for naught. there were no lives lost. people have electricity. they will get moving again tomorrow. and up here in boston and massachusetts, people are staying home because it is pretty bad. so give the guy a break, i say. i think that the criticisms are just somewhat ridiculous when we know what the weather services

were forecasting just 24 hours ago. >> yeah snowstorms and plowing and the like can be a no-win situation for mayors. but just to be clear, there are trade-offs. some people might say, why not shut down the schools and close everything down all the time? there are economic consequences consequences were family who have to deal with child care. you do give up a lot when you decide to do what mayor de blasio did? >> these decisions aren't made lightly. what factors into them is when is the snow hitting? if it hits overnight and you can plow early in the morning, get people moving everyone's incentive is to get commerce moving kids moving to school people into businesses. but the primary obligation of government is to ensure that people are safe and that they don't -- and aren't harmed. so you're constantly balancing that. and sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong.

and that's sort of just the nature of the game. but in the end, it was the right judgment call across the entire eastern seaboard. >> the mayor said it was a better safe than sorry scenario. i have to agree with him on that one. glad to see you hunkered down in cambridge. let's get to rosa flores right now. rosa is in london, connecticut. i believe you have the mayor of that city with you? >> reporter: you're absolutely correct. this is the mayor of this town. thank you so much first of all, for keeping me updated. he's been so gracious throughout this storm. now, you were telling me that one of the key things is power and access to roads. and that's what you have here. that's what saved the city. >> that is what's very critical. we have full power in the city. we've maintained it throughout the storm and we've been able to keep our main roads open which will when the storm abates allow us to get to the side streets. >> reporter: mayor thank you so much. back to you.

>> rosa flores in connecticut for us. thanks so much. >> our best of luck to you, to the mayor and all of you in the northeast still dealing with the storm for several more hours. that is all for us. i'm john berman. >> and i'm kate bolduan. "legal view" with ashleigh banfield starts right now. the wind is whipping up. it's getting stronger and stronger. >> it is relentless. >> better safe than sorry. >> hello, everyone. i'm ashleigh banfield. and our big breaking story, the blizzard that is walloping the northeast. states of emergency still in effect for seven northeast states up to 58 million people impacted by this monster storm. here are some of the largest snowfall totals.