i'm excited for life to return back to normal. >> right now at 4:30, removing masks. the state mandate is set to be lifted in just one week from today. we're moving you forward with what you need to know. >> and going for a joyride, a stolen police cruiser crashes. a wild turn of events outside a medical center in the south bay. also what investigators are revealing about the suspect behind the wheel. >> going for gold. here's a live look at the olympic flame in beijing. the winter games are in full swing, but for one olympian it's

a bittersweet moment as he reveals this will be his last olympic appearance. this is "today in the bay." a very good tuesday morning to you. thank you so much for starting your morning with us. i'm laura garcia. >> i'm marcus washington. we're broadcasting not only on your television, but you can catch us on roku, apple tv, amazon and online. we want to look at the commute in just a bit, but, first, meteorologist kari hall has a look at the forecast and what we can expect today. >> good morning. we're starting out chilly, but not as cold as it has been, as we are getting a clear view of downtown san jose right now. fog kind of drifting around in spots and our temperatures starting out in the low 40s. right now we're at 42 degrees in san jose, and with a milder start we'll actually have a warmer afternoon. take a look at the trend that starts to really rise quickly after 9:00, with all of the sunshine, and around the bay today we're going to see near record high temperatures for spots like santa rosa. upper 60s in san francisco and

martinez today, reaching up to 70 degrees. we'll get a look at the range in temperatures and what's ahead. mike, you have a chp report that looks all clear right now of crashes. >> exactly. as far as crashes go, nothing to report from chp, which is great. we look out to the live cam at the bay bridge and treasure island, and a clear view, clear drive across the freeway there. that translates to green, as you see, at the bay bridge at the the deep yellow like we saw yesterday, although it just cleared from the road weather index. altamont pass, you're at speed. and throughout the south bay, including the south county. back to you. >> thank you. this morning we are moving you forward as the state mask mandate is set to be lifted in just one week from today. >> governor newsom says you can ditch your mask if you're fully

vaccinated. a lot of questions and confusion remains because it's ultimately up to each individual county. "today in the bay's" cheryl herd has some answers. >> we reached out to a number of bay area health departments to find out how they plan to handle the lifting of the mask mandate next week. many of them say they don't know yet, but two bay area counties say they plan to follow the state's lead. in sa salano county, the face coverings are coming off. health officials are saying if you're vaccinated you can walk into a market without wearing a mask. >> i can't wait. i'm excited for life to return back to normal and take the mask off and not have to worry about it. >> reporter: the governor set this date weeks ago, but reaffirmed the state's mask mandate will expire next week. ucsf infectious disease dr. peter chin-hong thinks it's generally a good idea. >> overall we're definitely in

the right direction. i think it's a good move in general, given where we are. not only where we are, but where we are in terms of options to help people who are at risk for going to the hospital. >> reporter: just because the state says you can ditch your mask indoors if you're vaccinated, that doesn't mean you'll be able to. each county can set its own rules. we checked in with our local health departments. solano and marin counties tell us they're following the state's lead, meaning next week the masks can come off. we also heard back from san francisco, napa, santa clara, alameda, and contra costa counties. they haven't decided yet. >> in some counties if you have few icu beds, it may be not the right time. >> reporter: for now the state's policy for masking in schools is not changing. also, anyone riding public transit will still have to mask up. cheryl hurd, "today in the bay." >> take a look at this really bizarre scene that was playing

out in the south bay. a police cruiser recklessly circling numerous times in the middle of an intersection. the cruiser takes off, smashing head-on into an oncoming squad car. police say that driver was not a police officer. investigators say a patient in san jose's regional medical center got into some sort of scuffle with a security guard yesterday afternoon. responding officers spotted the suspect a few blocks away, jumped from their cars to go chase him on foot, and that's when police say the man managed to jump into the police cruiser. two officers and one bystander were injured in all of the chaos. witnesses were left speechless. >> the guy went berserk from that point on. i couldn't believe it. i was just trying to get home from work. >> all of the injuries are said to be minor. happening today in the east bay, the oakland school board will decide whether to close and merge as many as 15 schools.

the district says enrollment is headed toward record lows, creating a massive budget deficit. however, parents, teachers and school board members aren't buying it. >> why would they need to force these decisions on the community right now? we have enough resources and everyone has certified our budget for next year, so why are these closures being forced on us? >> people are struggling with educating their children during the pandemic and you're taking away one of the few security systems that children have. >> well, this is all playing out as an oakland music teacher is on his eighth day of a hunger strike to protest the district's plans. other opponents plan to lobby to use state surplus money to fill the gaps and keep all schools open. now to our 2022 winter olympic coverage. the men's snowboarding halfpipe qualification events start today. this year, america's most decorated star is set to make his final olympic appearance.

shaun white opened up to nbc's craig melvin about his historic olympic career and how he's managing expectations. >> i'm going to give it everything, i've prepared myself where i'm like, gosh, if i could win again, my goodness, what an amazing accomplishment. even to podium, even to be an olympian at 35 at the olympics is a feat. >> at 35, right? ahead for you at 5:00 a.m., janelle wang is joining us live from beijing with a full report on how bay area athletes are doing in the competition. 4:37 right now. facial recognition, coming up next on "today in the bay," the reason the irs is now suspending that practice. >> plus, a rise in pay. the increase some amazon employees can expect to see in their paychecks. >> and take a look at these temperatures. we're starting in the upper 30s in some spots. another cold one, but it will be a warm afternoon. we'll get a look at the range in

temperatures and what you can expect where you live coming up. >> and getting a live look at freemont, we're showing a smooth drive. headlights coming toward us are going south on the nimitz, smooth drive through oakland and toward the bay bridge. we're going to look at the longer drive and see if we have an early start or break coming up.

since i left for college, my dad has gotten back into some of his old hobbies. and now he's taking trulicity, and it looks like he's gotten into some new healthier habits, too. what changes are you making for your type 2 diabetes? maybe it's time to try trulicity. it's proven to help lower a1c. it can help you lose up to 10 pounds. and it's only taken once a week, so it can fit into your busy life. trulicity is for type 2 diabetes. it isn't for people with type 1 diabetes. it's not approved for use in children. don't take trulicity if you're allergic to it, you or your family have medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, changes in vision, or diabetic retinopathy. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. taking trulicity with sulfonylurea or insulin raises low blood sugar risk. side effects include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration, and may worsen kidney problems.

the choices you make can help control your a1c. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. care coalition, it's so good to see you all! alright! let's brainstorm. any ideas for new members? i'd like to nominate alaska airlines. this neck pillow i'm dating says great things! a caring airline?! wait, those exist?! it says here they were the first airline to switch from plastic bottles to boxed water. they also hire a lot of people from caring professions. i'm seeing former teachers and nurses. it's settled! alaska airlines is officially in the running! round of applause! the time is 4:40 and we do have

fog rolling around the north bay once again. visibility in napa and santa rosa down to about a quarter of a mile. so be careful out there on your way to work. then we're going to see temperatures warming up quickly. we'll take a look at that in our forecast coming up. >> kari, i just saw fog pop up on our maps as well. we'll show that to you better coming up. i do want to take a live look outside and show you no traffic problems for dublin on 580, but we have a good volume of cars and we're starting to see a little slowing for the early drive. of course, we can't start our day without bertha. >> thanks, mike. good morning to you. i'm bertha coombs from cnbc. wall street is looking like it's going to start slightly lower, particularly with the nasdaq. stocks slipped to start the week, the s&p 500 and nasdaq reversing course in the final hour of trading on monday. the dow eeked out a tiny gain of

just one point, but that counts as a gain, after being up as much as 235, and down as much as 95 points. investors are waiting for a key report on inflation later this week, expecting to show consumer prices to have risen more than 7% year-over-year. the inflation has led to speculation that the federal reserve could become more aggressive when it comes to hiking interest rates. mean who i am, the irs abandoning a controversial practice. it's going to halt the use of facial recognition technology to authenticate people who create online accounts. the practice has been criticized by privacy groups and lawmakers alike. critics say the third-party service could become a target for cyber threats and expressed concerns over how that information could be used by other government agencies. the irs is dealing with a worker shortage amid an expanded workload from processing tax

returns and operating pandemic related programs. and amazon has been raising hourly workers' wages over the last couple of years. now it is increasing the amount of base pay corporate employees can make due to the tight labor market and the competition with rivals sometimes paying more. corporate and tech employees can now make up to $350,000 in base pay. that's more than double the previous annual cap. base pay, though, is just one of the ways amazon employees get paid. they also generally receive stock and bonuses. amazon is the nation's second largest private employer, with 1.6 million full and part-time workers. although i'm not sure that 1 million of them actually get that 350k base pay. nice if you can get it. >> thanks so much, bertha. 4:43 this morning and warming temperatures are posing a threat worldwide. still ahead on "today in the bay," we're going to talk about

the impact our climate in crisis may soon have on the future of winter sports. space. the boundary of human achievement. the new frontier. ♪ ♪ eh. ♪ ♪ it's not time to escape. it's time to engage. it's time to plant more trees. hoo! ♪ ♪

time to build more trust. ♪ ♪ time to make more space for all of us. so while the others look to the metaverse and mars, let's stay here and restore ours. yeah, it's time to blaze our trail. 'cause the new frontier? it ain't rocket science. ♪ ♪ it's right here. ♪ ♪

welcome back. you're watching "today in the bay," and i am watching your longer drives right now, because most of the bay is very light traffic flow. so let's take a look at the maps, north 101 coming out of south county, the arrow shows you no slowing right now, but yesterday we saw a lot of pronounced slowing in gilroy, through san martin and easing up

in morgan hill. a nice drive over the santa cruz mountains right now. dark, but use caution. a little slowing has shown up coming into the altamont pass off of 205. usual patterns through the tri-valley. contra costa valley shows an easy drive right now. delays hi through the bay bridge. there's the fog we talked about, upper left-hand corner, see it registering in santa rosa? let's get a live look outside and show you how things are shaping up on the peninsula. clear view, clear drive. yesterday, kari, we saw low clouds creeping down here. the note for 101 is the express lane will start charging you through the area between redwood city and palo alto and that starts on friday morning. over to you. >> all right, we're starting out this morning clear in san francisco, but as we saw yesterday morning around sunrise, the fog really starts

to move around. so even though we're clear right now, that may change in some spots, and our temperatures starting out chilly. we're headed for a big warm-up for this afternoon, some low 70s in napa today. we're going to see upper 70s in santa rosa and i think that's going to be the warmest spot. we'll have to watch out for the potential that we could set a new record in that area today. elsewhere, we're looking at low 70s for san jose, reaching the low 70s as well for the east bay, and then coming back to the upper 50s. we're still in this dry weather pattern today, day number and now as we go into the next couple of days we're going to watch out for winds. this is a look at wind gusts for early on thursday morning. notice that we're starting to see a little bit of red in parts of the north bay and that's where in some of our upper elevations we could see winds starting to gust. we're also going to have warmer temperatures, and the warmest day is going to be on thursday. we'll be watching santa rosa

today for possibly setting a new record, but we'll also be watching the next few days. and thursday, with it being the warmest, we may see the most records fall, especially looking at concord as well as san jose. and also an update on our reservoirs, because it's been so dry, we're looking at reservoirs and the capacity going down. 32%, and we're pretty good for parts of the north bay. we're also seeing numbers going down. and the sierra snowpack is declining very rapidly. we're at 84% of normal statewide after being over 150% about a month and a half ago. well, now as we look at temperatures, we are going to be warming up. we're looking at mid-70s for the end of the week into the weekend. just a little bit cooler for the start of next week, but still no rain. and we're also looking at dry conditions in san francisco. we're going to see high

temperatures reaching into the low 70s into the weekend. and now let's turn to our climate in crisis. we're going to look at how olympic host cities like beijing may be impacted by climate change in the future. so there is this recent study from climate central and it shows that in the last 70 years beijing has warmed, on average, yearly 9 degrees for the month of february. and you probably noticed as you're watching, some of those videos for the events have snow, while the backdrop is like bone dry. that's because the mountains only get about an inch, about an inch and a quarter of snow in february. so they've created that snow, costing them about $60 million, and they're using the amount of water that would fill 400 olympic size pools using snowmaking machines. in that cold weather, the ice and the snow becomes basically

hard and icy, often making the course dangerous for those athletes. and when they surveyed those athletes and coaches, 94% of them were concerned about the future and how climate change may play a role in those winter games. and so forecasts show warming temperatures make beijing a less reliable place to have the olympics. palisades, tahoe, actually saw the least amount of warming, but the decline in snowpack will cause an issue there. so we've seen a lot of these videos with declining snowpack and it's possible by the year 2100 that only sapporo will be a suitable venue for the winter olympics. you can see more stories, like our climate in crisis, on nbcbayarea.com. click on the climate in crisis tab at the top of the page. laura? >> so interesting. thank you so much. it's 4:51 right now. beauty on her own terms. still ahead on "today in the bay," we continue celebrating

black history by introducing you to a local business owner who is breaking barriers and raising the bar for beauty standards. >> and happening now, a san francisco supervisor is making a push to tax vacant homes. so in 2019 the city report found more than 40,000 housing units are empty in the city. the tax is aimed at owners who are keeping those properties off the market, sometimes for years, as a business decision. the supervisor says the idea is similar to what has already been imposed in oakland and washington, d.c. he's holding a news conference today requesting the proposal be placed on the november ballot. we'll be right back.

4:54 for you this morning, and all this month we are continuing to explore not only the challenges, but successes of african americans right here in the bay area. this morning, we're taking a closer look at the state of black-owned businesses. "today in the bay's" cierra johnson spoke with a business owner and a small business advocate on why your support of these local businesses is so crucial. >> it was entrepreneurship first, it was working for myself, making my own standards. reaching goals. >> it's safe to say that being a boss as always been in kristen franklin's blood. >> this particular salon i just opened in august of 2021, but i've been the owner of paparazzi for the last 14 years and we came from east oakland. >> reporter: paparazzi beauty bar is a one-stop shop for high-end wigs and beauty services. but the road here, like for so

many business owners, hasn't always been smooth sailing. >> in my first salon, for sure, i had to come to friends and family and get loans and barter some situations. >> reporter: according to data gathered by cnbc, there are 30.2 million small business owners in the united states, but not every one of those businesses will survive. as many as 20% will close by the first year, 30% by the second year, and nearly 50% of businesses will have closed by their fifth year. but for minority-owned businesses, the odds are even grimmer. the same data reveals eight out of ten minority-owned businesses will fail in the first 18 months. >> we cannot move forward when we don't have the businesses to support our community. >> reporter: for the president of the san francisco african american chamber of commerce, the mission is to not only turn these statistics around, but also spread knowledge on just why these businesses are so crucial to communities.

>> the small businesses, the black businesses are very important because they allow the community to thrive. >> reporter: the doctor says covid disproportionately disrupted operations for minority-owned businesses. he says by supporting black-owned businesses you aren't just supporting your community in the short-term, you are potentially strengthening communities for generations to come, which in turn will continue to strengthen any community. >> because without generational wealth transfer from one generation to the other, what we have is always starting every generation restarting, starting from the beginning, when we should be at a particular level. we are struggling to begin again. >> reporter: a cycle this business owner is hoping she continues to break. >> i mean, it's paramount. that's the reason i get up and work so hard. >> reporter: cierra johnson for

"today in the bay." >> we are celebrating the history of blacks in the bay area on our nbc bay area streaming app. you can watch all of our stories. make sure you download it for free right now. this is for your roku, apple tv or amazon fire. 4:57 right now. no more masks. still ahead on "today in the bay," a live report on when the state mask mandate is set to be lifted, and the reason you may not want to throw away your mask just yet.

care coalition, it's so good to see you all! alright! let's brainstorm. any ideas for new members? i'd like to nominate alaska airlines. this neck pillow i'm dating says great things! a caring airline?! wait, those exist?! it says here they were the first airline to switch from plastic bottles to boxed water. they also hire a lot of people from caring professions. i'm seeing former teachers and nurses. it's settled! alaska airlines is officially in the running! round of applause!

i can't wait. i'm excited for life to return back to normal. >> right now at 5:00, the state mask mandate is set to be lifted in a matter of days. this morning we're moving you forward. ahead in a live report, why in some cases you may still need to keep the mask nearby. >> a live look in san francisco, and help may be coming for one troubled neighborhood. we're going to tell you about the debate today supporters believe could ease some of the problems of addiction running rampant there. >> a live look at the olympic flame in beijing. what a night on the ice. a u.s. skater going where no skater has gone before in his push to win gold. this is "today in the bay." good tuesday morning to you. thanks so much for making us a part of your morning. i'm marcus washington. >> and i'm laura garcia. if you're on the go, we broadcast not only to our television, but you can watch us live on roku, amazon fire, apple tv, and of course online. >> let's get you start