>> building a better bay area. moving forward. finding solutions. this is abc7 news. ♪ kristen: hi. i'm kristen sze. you are watching "getting answers" on abc7. every day, we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time. today, a government report shows america has a massive drug shortage. nearly 300 prescription drugs, many of them critical to saving lives. we will talk about why this is actually a national security threat. also while we may be tired of all this rain, tahoe ski resorts are loving it to an extent -- the good and the bad for skiers and ski resorts and neighboring businesses. we will talk to the folksat heavenly resorts . but first, some are calling

yesterday's storm a once in a tenure event. one that was so unexpectedly powerful, not that the scientists had it wrong but because mother nature had a couple of surprising turns. joining us is meteorologist spencer christian. it was mind-boggling what happened here. explain to people how it became such a monster. meteorologist: it is mind-boggling what happened here. it is uncommon, but not unheard of. before we get into talking about how the two low pressure sensors merged into one storm, we will start with a look at the satellite radar, over the past 24 hours, you can see at the beginning of this loop, this powerful storm that lasted through the bay area yesterday into last night now impact southern california. it is weakening as it does so. we have much, whether -- much

calmer weather today than we had yesterday. here are some of the record-setting events from the storm, the strongest march storm on record. bear with me, i need backup my graphic sequence here. i want to show you what's happening now, not all this stuff popping up on the screen right now. ok. here's a look at live doppler 7. you can see that right now, we have scattered areas of precipitation. most of the bay area's beginning to dry out a little bit. dear fremont, we have got some areas of some fairly steady rain , between fremont and dublin, into the peninsula, the santa cruz mountains, from palo alto southwood. some showers left over. but basically we are going into it -- into a quiet weather pattern right now. we have a coastal flood advisory

in effect for many locations near the coast around the bay. especially low-lying areas where high tides can produce localized flooding. look at how calm the wind is right now. yesterday we had gusts in some locations at 74 mph, 82 mph, wind temperatures in the mid-50's. it's a cool day. as for the storm, on the impact scale, a level 1. for the next few hours, the rain is exiting to our south. there is still a chance of isolated showers. over parts of the east bay and on the santa cruz mountains. there are slick roadways out here, so the evening commute could be a little challenging and surprisingly slippery in some spots. drivers and motorists should bear that in mind. here's the encouraging part of my report. 5:00 p.m., between 5 p.m. and 8

p.m. tonight, the rain basically disappears. the storm will be essentially gone except for maybe some isolated pockets widely scattered. tomorrow, into the early morning hours tomorrow, calm conditions with a chance of an isolated shower or two tomorrow. we are concerned about the next storm, beginning 12 a.m. saturday, midnight, clouds increase on sunday, you see the storm approaching, is going to be a storm that moves in on monday. it will begin as a level 1 storm and will intensify, we expected to intensify and become a level two storm by next tuesday. we don't expect this to be anywhere near the intensity or have anywhere near the impact of the storm we had here yesterday. but it can be quite impactful because the ground is so saturated here and it does not take powerful wind gusts like yesterday to blow trees over

when the ground the saturated like this. and there cod afloodingn toofh. we can go back and discuss srmln and comments. kristen: we are going to show viewers some of the incredible videos from yesterday. we had all those trees that toppled. very destructive. windows and high-rises getting blown out. sfo, all the planes having to go around -- to do go arounds because it was like 90 mph winds. we have not seen that in a long time. what caused this? what actually happened with the pressure systems? meteorologist: the fujiwara effect is named after a chinese meteorologist who first identified and what about this thing we call the fujiwara effect in 1921. what it is is, we had two

centers of low pressure yesterday, two storms with counterclockwise circulation that essentially became into such proximity, they merged into one stronger more intense storm. air has weight and pressure, so when we talk about low pressure, we are talking about sharply dropping barometric pressure that was so low that it caused the storm to intensify rapidly and produce those powerful wind gusts we had yesterday, above hurricane level. i want to be clear, these were gusts, not sustained winds above hurricane level. another feature of the storm that was rather unique yesterday was that it developed an eye. if you looked at it on the satellite and radar, you could see this opening right in the center of the storm, where it was sort of clear. similar to the eye of a hurricane. that is something that is

quite rare outside of a tropical storm or hurricane. kristen: normally this effect could happen with hurricanes and typhoons. normally you might say that off the coast. but to make it to land, to have this splitting going on and widening the area of impact, have you seen anything like this? meteorologist: i've been in 13 hurricanes, so when i have traveled through hurricanes, i have seen this, but not in a nontropical system. that does not mean it has not happened. the last 24 fujiwara effect has been seen, apparently it happens maybe 10-12 times a year globally. so it is unusual, but not unheard of. kristen: it also made a move further north. we got more of it. can you hear me ok? it also made a surprising turn north. we got more of it appear --

more of it up here. meteorologist: that is true. there were two sensors -- two centers of circulation. one moved north, one started to drop down. we got the double punch effect of the two. once they merged and formed one stronger storm with even lower barometric pressure, the pressure dropped so sharply and suddenly, that it had almost an explosive effect and caused the winds to intensify rapidly and become more widespread. that storm developed that eye we are talking about. kristen: we don't hear you guys say explosive effect very often because it does not happen very often. i heard a lot of weather aficionados talk about how this is going to be a case study for a long time. this particular storm. meteorologist: yeah. it will be a case study. as you pointed out earlier -- as i should've pointed out earlier, the storm had the

lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the month of march in a bay area storm. that's what they are studying right there. whenever you o fujiwara effect, they study it because it is such a rarity. the end it's a rarity for it to happen in a winter storm like this. it is more typical in tropical systems that develop over warm, tropical waters during hurricane season. so, yes, this storm is definitely going to be a point of study for quite some time. it will be showing up in meteorology classes and climatology classes in universities across the world. kristen: thank you so much, spencer. really appreciate that great expiration we could all understand -- explanation we could all understand. because we wanted an explanation. meteorologist: thank you. kristen: moving on, next, we will talk about a shortage of critical medication in the u.s. that's gotten so

severe, some lawmakers say it poses a serious national security threat. we will talk about

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kristen: the u.s. is experiencing an urgent and massive drug shortage. annual report -- a new report says we are short on nearly 300 different types of drugs, and that is endangering not only americans' health but also our national security. joining us to discuss what is going on and how you may be impacted is infectious disease expert dr. peter chin-hong. thanks for coming on the show. this is really alarming. are we seriously short on nearly 300 different types of drugs? >> yes, we are -- dr. chin-hong: yes, we are.

this is not a new problem. it's become more accentuated and made less invisible by the covid-19 pandemic. but it is something that we have lived with in the hospital setting for many years. kristen: can you talk about the range of these drugs and the ailments that they treat? dr. chin-hong: one third of the 295 drugs are antibiotics. i am very used to having drug supply shortages from time to time. even since i was in training. they have just become -- it has just become much worse during the covid pandemic. between 2021 and 2022, an increase in drug shortages by as much as 30%, they range from drugs for asthma, like albuterol, cancer, chemotherapy drugs, drugs for anesthesia. we have heard about adderall.

that made headlines a while ago. they also include over-the-counter drugs like during the tripledemic, the run for tylenol and ibuprofen. kristen: what is causing these shortages? i suspect it is not just one easy answer like many people are catching these things. tell us what is the combination of factors. dr. chin-hong: there are a bunch of different factors. one of course, people can wrap their heads around, which is demand. during the wintertime, when a lot of kids had fever, a lot of respiratory infections, people were running to get ibuprofen and tylenol. the second problem is probably the biggest issue for the last few years, the reliance on foreign manufacturers. it's become easier for drug companies to have raw materials brought in from particularly china and india. they provide i think more than 90% to 95% of the raw materials

needed for drug manufacturing. the third is i think poor visibility in the supply chain. the fda is really good about figuring out safety, when they approve a drug. but there is no great mechanism of knowing when drugs might become short, until after the fact. we saw that with tylenol and ibuprofen over the winter. i think the fourth problem is economics. frankly, many of these drugs don't cost a lot of money. they are generic. there is very little profit margin for manufacturers. so it is easy for generic companies to go belly up, with low profit margin. kristen: each of those reasons you cited seems to have several different possible solutions. but before we talk more about that, why is this coming out of a homeland security hearing? what is the national security

risk here? dr. chin-hong: we during covid-19, the covid-19 pandemic, for the last three years, if you have an unstable country, where you can't get enough drugs to treat the population, you can imagine having a lot of people out of the workforce. that is one thing from the country itself. when you think about country supplying, when you have a monopoly in certain countries like china and india supplying raw products for essential medications, if there a political conflict, a natural disaster, that can seriously affect the health of americans. kristen: from your enemy if that is where things are at, that sounds like, one piece of the solution

is having more u.s. production, but is not a lot of profit margin in generics. dr. chin-hong: one solution could be companies do manufacturing of raw products and medications in the u.s. the solution is also probably diversification. you can't have all your eggs in one basket. being american doesn't mean that you can't go out of business either. so i think you have to think about having multiple countries, building capacity. . we don't have any idea of what the supply chain is like and where the bottlenecks are until after the fact and we are usually very reactive. if we can get a better sense of where things are in the supply, that would be helpful. i think government regulations at some point. that is a two edge sword because

you don't want too many regulations either. you don't want somebody telling you can't make more than a certain amount of drugs because i said so. these are all possible solutions. kristen: what's been the impact for you as a doctor? are you prescribing other things to compensate? what are you doing? dr. chin-hong: the impact is huge. a little bit invisible to most people listening to this. but say for example we have an antibiotic that is a broad-spectrum that can treat multiple bacteria at the same time, when we don't know what's going on we might use it. but if we don't have it, we have to mix and match and may use three different drugs instead of one. what that can do is first of all delays therapy if we have to ration it out. and you have to make decisions. number two, increased risk of medication errors. because if you are giving three drugs instead of one, the chances of one having an error

is higher. from a patient perspective, you can imagine having less choice. maybe you prefer to have a smaller pill rather than the big horse pill, and it is really tough for you. these are all potential repercussions. kristen: what about when we talk about over-the-counter type medications we have also seen shortages of? what do you want consumers to keep in mind when they go to the store and can't find their tylenol and they look for something else? dr. chin-hong: as we or two ago, prices go up. it directly affects consumers. when we don't have an idea of what the supply chain is and how much we have in stock. so i think what we have learned over the last few months is that consumers have had to go to alternatives to other things that they may not have wanted, to use compounding pharmacists to take adult medicines and right size them for kids, all of

this may have safety risks as well as economic risk kristen: we need to keep better track and have a better database on what we need in the system overall. have we not been talking about that for the last three years? dr. peter chin-hong. thank you appreciate it. and tho they have go snow, it ig impact on tourism and ski resorts, and not always in a good way. we will talk live next to the vice president of heavenly reso

kristen: our battering of wintry weather has dropped too much snow on tahoe and some businesses. conditions have kept people away and at times have shut down ski lifts. let's give you a live look from the zephyr cove conrad lake tahoe. --

today many resorts announced they are hoping to make up for lost business. joining us live now is brick and you the vice president of operations at heavenly ski resort. do i see blue skies behind you? -- rick newberry, the vice president of operations at heavenly ski resort. do i see blue skies behind you? [laughter] >> we haven't seen much of it this winter. kristen: now that the sun is out, you also have a sunny, optimistic, forward-looking announcement to make about the season. what is that? >> we officially announced yesterday that we are going to extend our season intimate. -- our season into may here at heavenly ski resort. kristen: typically, when do you close? >> mid april is typically when we target. but with snowpack like this, we can go well into may. kristen: kirkwood is doing the same, several of the resorts.

you've all gotten a whole lot of snow. how much snow? can you give us an idea, compared to what you might consider a normally pretty good season? what do you have? >> we have 544 inches our biggest snow year was 2016, 2017, with 564 inches. with more storms come in, looks like we will break that record the next couple of weeks. kristen: can you talk a little bit about -- we always think more is better for tahoe, for snow, for skiing. however that hasn't always been the case because you guys have had to close a lot, right? >> yeah. we opened november 11. it's been cold and snowy ever since. we've had four full closure days and a number of when whole days -- windhole days due to the active weather we have seen this season. kristen: do you find that people

are not coming in perhaps as large numbers as you might like because of how difficult it is to get up there? >> have certainly been popular. when it snows, ski. if we know we are going to have challenging road conditions, we communicate that early and often and are as transparent around what is realistic for the operation either in the day ahead or the day of. kristen: we don't talk to some restaurants who said, a lot of people are just not making the drive, because it's been so challenging. hopefully we get you some good driving days in next two weeks. how is the snow condition, given the type of precipitation you've gotten? >> currently it's as good as it gets. . it is cold again. . we've got six inches of snow with the last system yesterday and the mountain is skiing great top to bottom and side to side. of 4800 acres are skiing well

right now -- all 4800 acres are skiing well right now. and it is spring already. kristen: it didn't feel like spring yesterday, that was crazy. are there different kinds of hazards that might present themselves because of the sheer amount of snow, for people who may were more used for skiing in years where you had to man make a lot of snow? any things they need to keep in mind? >> i think the biggest hazard we are all talking about right now is the snow load on rooftops. just asset management and protection, so taking care of our buildings and doing the same in the community. kristen: what are your opening hours? seven days a week at this point until may 7? >> yeah, seven days a week through may 7. we open up at -- at 8:30 a.m. saturday, sunday,

monday, 9:00 a.m. the rest of the weekend close at 4 p.m., come joining us. kristen: do you think you might make it to july 4? >> there's always a chance. kristen: thank you so much. really appreciate it. a reminder -- you can get our live newscasts, breaking news, weather, and a whole lot of weather and more with our abc7 bay area streaming tv app. it is available on apple tv, google tv, fire tv, and roku. just search "abc 7 bay area" and download it now. we'll be right back. here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. the three what? the three ps? what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget.

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see you at 4:00. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> tonight, breaking news as we come in the air, the urgent manhunt for a high school student who police say open fire on two faculty movers after a pat down. authorities in denver to meet warning he's armed and dangerous, police policing his image because of public safety. the 17 year old student allegedly fire, one of the staff members in surgery. school officials say he was specific we ordered to undergo pat down's because of previous issues. standing by the school in denver tonight. also this evening, the reporter tornado near downtown los angeles, 1 of 2 reported twisters, this record-breaking storm turning deadly in california, much like forcing homes be evacuated. drivers navigating streets with downed trees and power lines. 20 states tonight f