building a better bay area for a safe and secure future. this is happening right now, storm watch. we are up early for you tracking the strongest storm of the season. right now the bay area is littered with power outages after all of that heavy wind and rain overnight. we have team coverage showing who's in the dark this early morning. thousands of people under evacuation orders and warnings. we're hearing from residents who left and others who decided to ride it out. ooh, and new trouble for restaurants that just reopened for outdoor dining. this wind so strong you can see it's just blowing these tents away. >> and here's a look at live

doppler 7, and despite what you're seeing, the worst is actually over, but don't expect a dry day. mike is looking ahead at what's next. >> good morning, everybody, it is wednesday, january the 27th. >> let's get right to mike nicco. >> it's really wet outside, you're going to find standing water and breezy conditions. as you move later into the morning, things are going to -- i wouldn't say clear up, become a little easier. i've downgraded the storm to a 2 for the rest of today. it was a 3. that part has pushed to the south. you can see how strong it is over the monterey bay, and that is where the atmospheric river is going to stall just down to our south. that's where we're going to see the potential for the greatest amount of damage moving through today. as you look at the rest of us, it's all green except for around hamilton. we may wake up with a little dusting of some snow there. waves of showers and downpours, that's what you can expect the rest of the day. i had the golden gate bridge, i

think that's 101 and 880 in san jose, that is definitely wet. here's a look at your planner today. pretty mild out there, temperatures in the 40s to near 50 at 7:00. we'll hang out in the low to mid-50s with waves of showers on and off as we head through not only the morning commute, but the afternoon and evening commute, and we'll keep this going all the way through tomorrow. ou first dry day looks to be moving in possibly friday. this is going to keep everything damp, and when you get under one of these downpours, it's going to cause some localized flooding where you happen to be, and so you'll want to slow down and obviously take some caution. but we're going to keep watching the central coast for the biggest chance of some damage there. our winds are not too aggressive right now, and they'll continue to back off as we head throughout the day. waves of showers, downpours likely. there is a chance of a thunderstorm, which would mean heavier downpours and small hail. the best chance of that is mainly up in the north bay,

we're moving into mendocino county and points northward. that's something that we'll keep an eye on also. we'll have more on this coming up. >> the storm has knocked out power to tens of thousands of people around the bay area. jobina fortson at the live desk looking at those numbers. thank you, reggie, we are waiting on an update from pg&e. they said more than 38,000 pg&e customers lost power overnight. we want to take a live look at the out age map so you can see what's happening in your area. there are a lot of them. the map has been busy all night. just about every outage is because of the weather. the north bay had more than 5,500 outages, 4,800 were reported in the south bay, the peninsula had about 1,000, and more than 600 in san francisco. the largest outages have been in the east bay where more than 26,000 customers have lost their electricity. abc7 news reporter amy hollyfield is live in pleasant

hill with an update on all of that. good morning, amy. >> all right, we will check back in with amy in just a moment. first we want to talk to you about evacuations. more than 5,000 people in the santa cruz mountains, they were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm. now here is a look at the evacuation map. we want to show you the areas highlighted in red are mandatory, and you can see that those stretch across both santa cruz and san mateo counties. we do have abc7 news the way. more than 200 residents chose to ride out the storm at home. boulder creek residents jennifer and michael park said they decided to stay in their home because they have a generator and a house full of supplies

that could last them weeks. they did have to sign a waiver when the sheriff's office knocked on their door to issue that mandatory evacuations. >> i'm not anxious that my house is going to get torn away. i believe what i'm most anxious about is just that the roads will get blocked. >> it's a wonderful place to live. we love it here, and it's just -- there's natural hazards that you have to prepare for. >> reporter: the fires forced the parks from their home for more than a month. they believe the safest choice is to stay put knowing their home is not near any dangerous hills. this is new video from boulder creek in santa cruz county overnight. this was shot near highway 9 near highway 236. you can see the water going over the sidewalks and the heavy rain in front of johnny's supermarket. let's take a look at san francisco where the downpour is already causing issues for the morning commute. southbound lanes of i-80 are currently flooded. this new video from overnight shows cars making their way through at least a few inches of water that's piled up there. some cars went through slower

than others. the chp is now on the scene there. this winter storm has caused a lot of trouble for santa rosa restaurants that just reopened for outdoor dining. look at this, strong winds ripped the outdoor dining tent at jackson's bar and oven from its moorings, and then look what happens next. as the staff was trying to secure it, another huge tent goes flying through the air across the street. and then down the street at belly left coast kitchen and tap room took on loads of water. the owner says despite the storm they're still looking forward to reopening. >> i think we're just excited for a new start, a new beginning, and try to find -- get more people downtown, not just with this business but other businesses. >> firefighters also went door to door in neighborhoods near burn scars from last year's glass fire. there is a threat of mudslides and homeowners are being asked to be vigilant and to have a plan to evacuate if they need to. now let's go to the sierra

where things are getting pretty dangerous. there's a blizzard warning right now. this is a look at the roadways around 10:00 last night. there are actually cars and trucks making the drive through the mountains. we checked a little while ago, chains are required east of sacramento on major routes like interstate 80 and highway 50. all right, let's take a look at what's going on. i'm going to start with the blizzard warning up in mendocino and lake county, and it's down to 1,500 feet. it still goes through noon today. and about three to six inches more is possible, which is going to make travel really difficult there. good news for the north bay, outside of northern solano county, you have been removed from the flash flood watch. for the rest of us, the santa cruz mountains, the east bay hills in the diablo range. there's still a possibility of flooding through 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. debris flow is going to be an issue, especially in the santa cruz mountains to ale.

strong winds until 7:00 today, and that is for all of us, except for at higher elevations where it continues to go up until 7:00 this morning, for wind gusts that could potentially be even faster up to 60 or 70 miles per hour, but i really think the worst of that is behind us. in fact, let's take a look at the current winds, and you can see most of us are dealing with winds less than 20 miles per hour. so the likelihood of damage out of that is pretty minimal. and so is -- or so are the winds up in the higher elevations up to 31 in diablo. so i imagine both of those advisories and watches will be allowed to expire when we get to the 7:00 hour. let's take a look with radar really quick and show you what's going on. your best chance of standing water is right now, but you can see there's the potential as more showers develop of some of these producing some minor flooding in some of those areas. let's take a quick look at future radar. we'll just do it mainly for

today. as you head for 5:00, you can see some yellows up in the north bay, even some yellows over san francisco as we head towards 6:30. you can see waves of green with embedded yellows. keep the umbrella handy and knowing it's going to be tough traveling just about any time today because the streets are going to stay wet just about all day. let's turn it over to jobina and find out about that morning commute. a little tough getting to work today. >> yes, mike, i definitely saw that reflected from the chp this morning on their log. we have a sig alert. we have a jackknifed big rig. this is going to be on southbound 680 at the southbound 101 connector. the reason you see that purple line there is because the southbound lane there is shut down. moving over now to mountain view where we do have roadway flooding, the chp is reporting on state route 85 at 101, roadway flooding is covering the entire area. so there is flooding across all of the roadway.

bringing in our live cameras right now, we're going to start off with the bay bridge toll plaza. we have a number of advisories. a high wind advisory issued for the bay bridge, dunbarton bridge, san mateo bridge and the antioch bridge by the chp, although it does not look as windy and i know mike said this as well. you can certainly tell by the flags. it's certainly slick. a live camera showing you 101 in san jose, very slick down there as well. we've watched a number of spinouts this morning and several crashes. please be careful out there. back to you guys. we are tracking power outages, a lot of them right now are in the east bay. amy hollyfield is joining us live in pleasantfield this morning. >> reporter: look behind me at this downed power line here in pleasant hill. we are on keats circle at oak park road. it's dangling there in the middle of this residential street. it's very dark here. you can tell that the power has been knocked out by what has

happened here. we are just down from the safeway in pleasant hill. there is a police officer here parked monitoring this. he's closed this street. he's, you know, here to make sure no one gets close to it, that everyone is safe. he says no one was hurt when this happened. he's been here for a couple of hours. he's just waiting on pg&e to get here. he's hearing it's going to be a while. he says pg&e has a long list of power outages to get to, so they're just waiting, but pg&e very busy after this storm. reporting live in pleasant hill, amy hollyfield abc7 news. >> thank you, amy. coming up, the san francisco dog who is saying no to the stormy weather. also, new video of the strong weather and rain on the bay bridge overnight. and still in the mountains, it's great news from skiers and snow boarders, we are hearing from people who are ready to hit the slopes. first we'll take you live outside where at least as of a little while ago it was not

here's some video with you of what it looked like on the bay bridge. it was stormy overnight. this is on the eastern span of the bay bridge heading into san francisco, so heading westbound at about 1:30, and that's what we talked about when the heaviest of the rain was going to be moving through, and sure enough, you can see it coming down sideways and those lieghts. that's pretty impressive. you can see everybody's slowed down quite a bit. here's a look right now, you can see it's not nearly as treacherous. we're looking from south beach at the western span, which is definitely wet, and we've got a south wind, so a little bit of a cross wind at about 11 to 15 miles per hour, and notice right now it's not raining on the richmond san rafael bridge, the golden gate bridge or on the bay bridge, at least according to live doppler 7. there could be some mist in the air. the venetian bridge and the car key nis bridge about to get wet.

we've got showers to the north and sandwiched between the san m mateo bridge and the dunbar bridge. we're 2 if you're just joining us on the scale. you can see some thunderstorms possible today and some downpours. while the worst of the storm is over, a 2 is not anything to sneeze at. we'll talk about more about what to expect coming up. take a look at this time lapsed image from a pg&e camera. it shows snow transforming mount vaca into white rolling hills. the peak is high enough to get snow in the winter. and here is another before and after. this is walker ridge at the border of lake and ka lieu is a counties. the clouds rolled in yesterday afternoon and then the knsnow started to fall. >> some people in the east bay are excited about the stormy weather because it means snow in the mountains. a lot of people flocking to the

ski shops. the snow prospects had skiers in a frenzy. >> i just hope i stay warm, i guess, and if i need to stay there a couple more nights, school's online and everything. >> we've got a cabin to stay in. we've got reservations to ski, so we're hoping for the best. we're actually really excited to, you know, stay bundled up and see a snowstorm we'll hopefully remember forever. >> many of the shoppers plan to drive to the mountains before the storm arrived, which is always a good idea so they could hit the slopes later today. san francisco dog is saying no to the stormy weather if it means having to wear a raincoat. >> jasper. [ laughter ] >> look at me. i'm sorry. >> now, is she really sorry with that laugh? jasper clearly is not having it. he won't even look at her. this video was posted on twitter with a message that says, so i

got my dog a cute poor jasper. i just -- jasper. why does the dog have the raincoat on in the house? why put it through that at this point? >> it's a cute coat, though. >> is it? >> i think so. >> that's what i'm going to go for woodstock for you. >> woodstock likes clothes. >> he does. he likes a costume. he's mad at us because he says we don't have enough clothes, mike. he doesn't have a raincoat. he would like one. >> we tried to put a santa clauclaus coat on oreo. can you imagine? >> did you get scratched? >> no, he didn't get violent. if he could have crawled under the carpet or under the floor, he would have done that.

that's how he felt about it. he was i guess ashamed. all right, let's turn back to the weather. that was fun. and one of our heavier downpours south of stoneridge mall. you can see it just changed from yellow to green, so we're looking at 685, 84 all getting rain right now. we've got a heavier shower heading over towards novato and possibly right up 101 as you're heading towards penn grove and petaluma. just off the coast there you can see a thunderstorm. those are the areas i'm worried about the heavy downpours later on today that will cause or all day today, i should say, downpours are in play not only today but also tomorrow. here's a look at where our best chance and it's right from the golden gate bridge, san pablo bay, right up 101. this is our best chance for thunderstorms, and they'll likely develop over the ocean and then rotate into the north bay and weaken as they do. as the mountains tend to do, the inflow into the thunderstorms kind of disrupts it. here's a look at the big

picture. this area of low pressure is going to sit here and spin. look at this huge bowl of cold air, thousands of miles wide and deep. the key is the atmospheric river is going to stall to our south. that is going to cause really significant issues along the central coast and up into yosemite where we have a winter storm warning. we have no travel in the sierra today. you can see the best chance of heavier showers at 5:00. it is moving through the north bay, and look at that, just with a southerly wind today it's going to be humid, but it's going to be kind of cool with temperatures in the upper 50s. so here you go, just waves of showers all day today coming in us from the south. more waves of showers with heavier downpours. look at this, even as we head towards tomorrow morning, it could be even rainier than this morning trying to get around tomorrow morn. this morning we're dealing more

with what's leftover from last night. and finally, eventually by tomorrow night, we'll start to see a tapering. there may be a few showers for our earliest commuters friday morning. friday afternoon into saturday, and even sunday are starting to look a lot drier than they did yesterday, and then the pattern returns for monday and tuesday. here's reggie. >> thank you. new developments, a san jose hospital executive has been disciplined after allowing los gatos teachers and staff to jump the vaccine line. a good samaritan hospital spokesperson confirms disciplinary action has been taken against the hospital's coo. the hospital was embroiled in controversy after it was revealed they gave 65 doses to los gatos union district staff. president biden says more vaccine is on the way. his administration is now promising to buy an extra 100 million doses of both the pfizer and moderna vaccines for a total of 600 million. that means the u.s. would have enough to vaccinate nearly all

americans by the end of the summer. state governors were also told they can expect a 16% increase in the vaccine they receive starting next week. california is changing the way it delivers and tracks the covid-19 vaccine. governor newsom announce that had a new secretary in charge of delivery will decide where the state's supply of the vaccine should go. he says a recent ten-day push to get residents shots tripled the weekday vaccination numbers to 125,000 a day. people age 65 and up can now get vaccinated in santa clara county expanding from those 75 and up. coming up next, the seven things to know this morning. also, will lori loughlin's husband be released from prison early? a judge's decision on that request. and here is a live look outside right now at the bay bridge, a lot different from what it looked like just a few hours ago with all that rain coming down.

. it's 4:20. if you're just joining us, thanks for stopping by.

while the strongest part of the storm is over, we're still a 2, a moderate storm for waves of showers, downpours likely, even some thunderstorms possible in the north bay today and to a lesser extent tomorrow. number two this morning, more than 38,000 pg&e customers have lost their electricity because of the storm. you can see the outages posted on pg&e's map. the largest outages are in the east bay where more than 26,000 customers don't have power. number three, more than 5,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate in santa cruz county. about 200 people refused to leave saying they are riding out the storm at home. number four, the winter storm is causing some trouble for santa rosa restaurants that have just reopened. strong winds sent outdoor dining tents from multiple places flying into the street. number five, the intense rain overnight forced drivers to slow down. this is what it looked like on the bay bridge around 1:30, and you can expect wet roads as we head out of the door this morning. absolutely, number six, we

have roadway flooding. we have forcible car spinouts, and two, jackknifed big rigs out there causing problems this morning. i want to bring you to a live picture of one of those big rigs in san jose at the southbound 680 at the southbound connector. that connector ramp is shut down. this is a sig alert. number seven, the storm, it is turning the sierra into a winter wonderland, some areas could get more than seven feet of snow, and that has skiers and snow boarders pretty excited. a judge has denied a request from love rri loughlin's husban be released from prison early. >> in this morning's gma first look request denied. the fashion designer and husband of tv star lori lo lori lo lorio mow genie lieu is waking up behind bars. just halfway into his sentence for his role in the varsity

blues college admissions scandal. giannulli pleaded guilty to paying half a million dollars in bribes to get his daughters into usc. after spending nearly two months in solitary confinement because of covid-19 protocols, his attorney filing a motion tooo complete the sentence in home. it took a significant toll on his mental, physical, and emotional well-being. coming up at 7:00 a.m., we'll tell you more about the judge's decision to keep giannulli in prison, with your gma first look, i'm caylee har tong. the winter snowstorm is bringing snow. it's really windy when this video was taken overnight. the ground covered in snow, not a thing we see a whole lot in wine country. >> wow. >> our storm coverage continues next with the latest look at the power outages in the aftermath of this wet and windy weather. covid-19 and schools, a new

cdc report looks at if it still spreads with safety precautions and what kids in sports need to know. and let's take a live look outside right now at the golden

. building a better bay area for a safe and secure future, this is abc7 news. live doppler 7 lit up in green, the worst of the storm is over, but meteorologist mike nicco is still tracking wet and windy weather this morning. >> and storm damage, a family was inside this home when this large tree came crashing in. >> the storm didn't keep everyone cooped up inside, we are hearing from people who dcided to brave the elements. i mean, those are people who really wanted to do the outdoor dining desperately. good morning on this wednesday, january 27th. >> before we get to those stories, we want to check in with meteorologist mike nicco for a look at the day ahead.

good morning, mike. >> good morning, kumasi, reggie, hi, everybody, i have downgraded the storm. it was a 3, the heaviest part of the storm, the most damaging part of the storm has moved on, so today and tomorrow we're going to be a 2, a moderate storm. we're going to have waves of showers. you're going to hit several times over the next two days with showers, and every once in a while we'll have some downpours, which will create some localized flooding once again. but not wide scale flooding. lightning is possible, especially across the north bay, and that's mainly a today feature. so let's take a look at what's going on with our radar, with live doppler 7, and what you're going to see is -- i'm trying to show you, there we go, that the heaviest of the rain is well down south. it's into hollister, it's heading down into solidad. some snow trying to develop on hamilton. our