but we begin now with chief meteorologist bill martin. >> a wind advisory for the bay area. you're looking at heavy rain if you were with us earlier this is yellow now it's turning orange and red near san rafael, millvalely, pinol. the progression of the rain is moving fairly rapidly. if i go to the latest imagine here you can see out toward point richmond here, out toward tiburon we have heavy rain. what we can do right now is take a live camera in san francisco. it is raining hard, i will tell you what. that's how it's going to be for the next few hours as this powerful front approaches. that's where sal castaneda,

he's right there in larksburg. and of course you have high tide right now and it's raining. >> the tide is not as high as it was last week. we might be in trouble. one of the things the residents here are worried about is contamination. it's so windy here that one of the signs, i don't know if you can see it, they had posted the sign, the wind blew it right down, so we picked it back up. they are worried about contamination here because of recent sewage spill. >> reporter: many here are worried about too much rain which could mean the spread of contamination. >> i think it will create a lot of overflow and contamination for a lot of residents that live on the water like my mother does. i understand that the sewage went into the creek which is horrible. >> reporter: marin county officials say the rain could

happen provided it doesn't come too fast. >> the rain will dilute the bacteria in the water. the rain helps to wash off surfaces, the streets. >> reporter: the rain is expected to last a few days longer, many say they are prepared for the possibility of flooding and power outages. >> it's good to be prepared. i think people get caught off guard because they get complacent on what they are doing every day. >> reporter: you're looking at a live picture of the creek here which is here in the lougeburg area. it certainly appears to be within it's banks. there's heavy rain and wind where we are right here. we spoke to the director of the ross valley district, he says there's no reason why the barriers they put up shouldn't

be able to with stand the storm. the sierra is under a winter storm warning tonight and that will continue into tomorrow. let's give you a live look at what's happening. chains are required here and you can see it is slowly slow going. ken pritchett made his way to the sierra and says scientists were surprised on what they found today. gurkey has performed the measure of the snow packs for decades. this year's results. >> i'm pretty surprised. the southern sierra is even more phenomenal. it started building about two weeks and and has seemingly not let up. >> reporter: here it was 158% of normal for this test site in the central sierra off highway

50, a big difference from last year. >> pretty much double that we had last year, same location, same time of year. >> reporter: the key to a healthy water supply is continued snowfall in january through march. >> most of the reservoirs are in flood control mode meaning they're making releases to main storage for flood control space. so everyone though we're starting out with a pretty phenomenal snow pack. come april 1st, it may not be so good. in fact, the snow pack results for the state are about 200% of normal so you know the blizzard conditions there in south lake tahoe made it difficult for us to bring you ken pritchett's live report. it is a blizzard there tonight. caltrans made energy repairs on a stretch of highway 17. the repairs shored up a divider near the dangerous curve near the laurel exit. lanes were shut down in both

directions for about hour hours. the divider was in bad shape because someone hit it last night. residents were also working hard by getting sandbags and cuts down trees that look dangerous. for the second day we've had another big repair going on because of potholes, comes up in 10 minutes we'll go back out live to the elements to take a look at the worse of the problems and what crews are doing right now to make your ride a little safer an smoother. now to san francisco, as residents are asking for a change at what they call a dangerous intersection. a gray sedan hit a man that was riding a bike and sped away. residents say the area needs a stop sign because there are too many hit and near misses. >> i'm afraid of this intersection.

>> reporter: the city transportation authority says it could install a stop sign if enough people petition the agency to do so. in the meantime the cyclists is in the hospital tonight with life threatening injuries. the hit and run driver has not been caught. 11th hour negotiations are under way to try to save the jobs of six antioch police officers. the police union met behind closed doors hoping to prevent the lay offs due to take effect next week. it's part of an effort in a projected budget deficit that may climb up to $3 million. >> we're broke. we're barely making it, we're trying to survive. >> crime has gone up, with less police it's going to cause stress to the community. >> the deal includes more jobs, that would still have to be approved by the council. a lot of money was change

-ld -- changing hands right in the middle of a freeway. an armoured truck hit a big rig. they called another armoured truck that provided security. the company complained about their drop calls and slow service is about to hit the accelerate pedal. tom vacar joins us live now from san francisco with details, tom. >> reporter: have a look, what at&t has decided is to use this tall beacon, a powerful beacon to break up congestion of traffic on it's system here in the financial district. when the ball drops on time square friday night, at&t customers there should have fewer complaints like lucy stark who we met today in the financial district. >> i hang up on people sometimes accidentally because

my call gets dropped. >> also i don't get service sometimes when my verizon friends do. >> reporter: that problem hits people providing other services. >> some people have problem with the service, some people have problems with the at&t customer service. >> reporter: so the embarcadero will soon become a large wifi. >> while these folks are enjoying the high speeds of the wifi network, other folks are seeing better network experience with the 3g network. >> i think it's a good experience. when i would lose connection with 3g, i think wifi would come in handy. >> reporter: it's like the free wifi you find at starbucks but on a super scale. >> we have more wifi spots throughout the nation at a much

bigger scale. >> this is the first of a program is going to continue to expand throughout 2011. now the most congested areas across the country will be the first to get the upgrade. meaning that many locations right here in the bay area will be amongst the first. reporting live, consumer editor tom vacar,ktvu channel 2 news. a los angeles county man filed a lawsuit last week in federal court. he is accusing apple of allowing applications on the i pad and iphone that transmit personal information to advertisers without the users consent. the suit also names applications such as pandora and weather.com. googles mobile apps could be next. >> this could impact adverse reu one of the biggest revenue engines in the silican valley.

on the other hand it could provide a new set of rules and regulations that would protect people. >> apple is set to go to court next month. rainwater is filling these cracks in the roadway. we'll tell you how it's causing a major problem for caltrans and for commuters. if you think you're having a hard time on the roads with our weather. take a look at this. it is nothing compared to what's happening in the east. and because of the weather, more cancelled flights.

you've seen the troubles in the northeast with the weather. but it was also tough in north carolina. this is in raleigh, fortunately

the car came to a stop without hitting anything. in new york city, things are slowly getting back on track, this morning the trains began rolling on the long island railroad but big delays continue. yesterday, the rail ways shut down, not a train went by. nationwide airlines cancelled about 10,000 flights because of that massive storm that could cost the airlines about $100 million. just a footnote here, one of our writers at ktvu was supposed to fly back to the bay area from new jersey yesterday, she's been keeping us posted, and says she is not going to be able to get a flight now until this saturday. things are still not going well at san francisco international airport because of the problems back east.

frustrated customers are still cancellations. most say their flights are facing one to four hour delays. a santa rosa high school graduate has lost his life while snow boarding. the 20-year-old was reported missing at 4:00 on christmas eve. his body was found the next morning in a creek. cooper plaxico was at the resort with his family. powerful winds kicks in, five chairs from 30 feet on to the snow. many people were screaming in fright. at least eight who fell were hospitalized. they are expected to be okay. dozens more were stuck on the lift until rescuers brought them to safety. >> i felt the big jolt, then i

heard people scream and i saw the people drop. for a while i thought i was going to fall too. >> we spoke to skiers and they say they are not concerned it will happen in the bay area. >> you don't think about stuff like that. it's all for the love. it gives me an opportunity to spend time with my kids, i love this. >> now the ski lift in maine had just passed an inspection but was due to the replaced. for the second day in a row, trouble on a main freeway because of a pothole.

ktvu's cristien kafton has the -- christien kafton has the report. >> if we have a problem with the area we have to monitor to make sure we don't have additional problems. >> reporter: the repair work comes just one day after crews scramble to repair another pothole on highway 101 in roner park. drivers say they are noticing increasingly bumpy areas.

motisia says he lost a hub cap after he drove over a pothole. >> i saw it in the mirror, i was missing a cup. >> reporter: and drivers like william barns says potholes on city streets are bad enough, but hitting them on freeways at 65 miles per hour could be disastrous. >> freeways is worse. for sometime it seems like no matter how hard you try, not to you will hit one and man, when you hit it you hit it. >> reporter: coming back to our live shot, this is a perfect example of how caltrans tells me these potholes form. you can see water is filling this rather slow pothole here. you can see how more water is being forced into the crack and enlarging that pothole. we're live in crockett, christien kafton. >> man, it is just pouring where he is. is that the worse or it's still to come isn't it.

>> we're getting high rainfall, but there's more high rainfall coming behind this. i want to show you the system we're watching right now. you can see the back edge of it. it's pretty far back. let's move a little bit close. we're going to show you the current radar imagine. you can see the heavier rain, we're seeing reds and oranges now. what we can do is we can grab the leading edge of the heavy rain. because it's been kind of light in san leandro. but what's happening as this system tracks south, you're going to see areas like west oakland, emeryville, china town and oakland areas like that are really going to start to see the rain pick up in the next five to 10 minutes. this band moving across the sunset district. you can see those areas are going to be seeing heavy rainfall. and there's more out behind this as we mentioned, it's just

a wet evening ahead. this isn't a surprise, we saw it coming. and it's verified, we got urban advisories. and a winter storm warning in effect for the mountains as you would expect. so here we are the fronts just getting here, heavy rain, gusty winds overnight. certainly up till about 10:00, 11:00 tonight. then it clears out. we still have light wind and those winds will start to die down. here is what you've been waiting for. tuesday at 8:00, that's tonight. there's the back edge of it. this is significant rainfall. some of those reds and yellows, this is the computer models. those rainfall rates half inch an hour, .75 of an inch of water, that's the type of rain you find in a tropical storm. your night is going to be wet, we know that.

flood advisory in the north bay. high tide just a half an hour ago. you know where you get the little flooding areas, especially in high tide. those are the places to watch. as we go through the night it basically clears out expect in the mountains where the mountains just get hammered. they're going to get hammered all night. i wouldn't be surprised if 80 and 50 got shut down for an hour or two as this heavy band moves through. >> so the rain here will probably start to taper off when? >> i would say 9:00, 10:00 it's going to start to wind down, but it's pretty intention. >> that shot from christien kafton out there in crawford, man was it coming down. a news station to the rescue in a very ingenious way. a rancher called a tv station for help after his calf got stuck on a frozen pond. the pilot of the station's helicopters came up with an

unusual solution. he used the wind from the chopper's blades to actually push the calf to safety. boy that is some smart thinking. at one point the calf fell through some broking ice but it was eventually pushed to safety. >> would have never thought of that. arguably the greatest basketball is coming to the bay area and why disneyland had to turn people away today. and another day of light trading just ahead of the new year. investors brushed off disappointing news and home prices, the nasdaq closed down four points, we'll be right back.

boy people are just packing into disneyland. the anaheim theme park filled up only two hours after gates opened this morning. these are file pictures. so for the second day in a row, park officials had to stop

selling tickets. people who could not get into the park were led to california park which is right next door. >> finding a general manager and finding a head coach and york the president and ceo interviewed a couple of people over the phone and spoke to a fellow by the name of tony softly who was formerly with the rams for the general managers job. so the interviewing process is under way. meantime just because things didn't work out for well for the 49ers and raiders on the field doesn't mean they have good players like patrick willis named again to the probowl for the fourth time he is the only 49er to make it his first four years in the league. also defensive lineman smith goes to the probowls for the 49ers. he's second on the team, in fact, the alternates go into the probowl. the raiders one up the 49ers,

they've got three ing to the probowl. the great namdi great defensive guy. punter lechler and seymore. they gave up a pick to get him. meantime you know what the sanford women may just be able to be ready to pull off a victory thursday night that everyone is looking at, the uconn game. the stanford hammered xavier. finishing the break there, of course uconn comes to town thursdays night having won a record 89 consecutive games. >> this is why we play these games to really let us know where we're at. so that we don't, i mean this to me i told my team this is

like the ncaa tournament. you play xavier and you don't play connecticut. it's very challenging. but our team is looking forward to it. and it's coming and so we're very excited. as you probably know, stanford is the last team to actually beat uconn, 89 games again and it's a jammed house complete sell out for thursday night as you would imagine. >> okay. see you at 10:00. see you mark and we'll have much more on this intense weather coverage coming up. the rain and wind is just starting to roll in. that's it for now, we'll see you back here at 10:00. >> have a good evening everyone. w t ileororr li irore