and for a limited time get $400 off a new eligible 5g phone. switch today. ♪♪ a very good thursday morning to all of you. i'm alex witt. at the top of the hour in buffalo, new york, the community is digging itself out one week after a snowstorm stopped daily

life in its tracks and left dozens of people dead. in eastern europe, millions of ukrainians are grappling with freezing temperatures in the dark with no power after russia unleashed another brutal series of missile strikes across the country today. we're going to take you live to kyiv. also this hour, the new year could bring some relief at the pump. we're going to take a look into why some experts say gas prices could continue to tumble in 2023. and in 25 hours from now, house lawmakers will release former president trump's tax returns to the public. what we can expect all coming up. but we begin with the latest on the recovery hours after a blizzard left 76 people dead nationwide. in buffalo, new york, we have national guard troops helping to dig that community out. then in rochester, state officials broke out a handy new vehicle with a tool that acts as

a claw to pick up and drag cars and vans to clear the roadways. there you see it. but the travel chaos triggered by this storm is still worsening. today thousands of passengers are scrambling for a plan "b" to try to get home amid the southwest airline meltdown. joining us now, nbc news correspondent blayne alexander and jessie kirsch from new york. blayne, describe the scene for us at the airport in plant and the level of exhaustion that these passengers are facing as this mess is stretching out into another terrible day. >> reporter: what's interesting, when you kind of look at the southwest counter there behind me, you see maybe the opposite of what you might expect to see, like long lines, it's empty over there. and that's because the vast majority of southwest flights out of atlanta have been canceled. so there really is not a lot of activity simply because there aren't a lot of southwest planes

flying out of here. that gives you just a look at what this means not only here but around the country with so many of the airline flights grounded. you talk about seeking other ways to get home. we talked to people who really have explored options across the board. whether it's taking buses, whether it's taking a train. i met one family who took a bus down for part of their journey, then rented a car and drive the rest of the way home. we're talking about nearly 48 hours or so just to get back to their home after a christmas vacation. this is really something, yes, it's trying for a lot of people, but it shows that the frustration extends long after people get home because for every leg of that unexpected trip, that's also unaccounted for expenses that they're racking up. sometimes in the hundreds, even in the thousands of dollars. southwest has said that people can commit their receipts online to get reimbursed. but people are waiting to see how much of a reimbursement

they'll get and when that will come in. >> and so the resources that are available to them, is there anyone helping them, blayne, with trying to book hotels or get food delivered or -- you think that everyone at the airport might get sold out food-wise, right? there's a lot of people there looking for something to eat. >> reporter: from the people i've spoken to, they said they've had to figure it out on their own. there have been some people, for instance, the couple that took the bus, they said there was somebody at their gate who said, southwest representative at their gate who said i have 19 bus tickets to atlanta. anybody want one of these? but it seems like the situation varies from place to place. as for trying to get reimbursements and things like that, it was an executive announced that they set up a special place on their website for people to actually try and submit is receipts. you've seen the mountains of luggage at airports across the country, including for a time here in atlanta yesterday. there's a section on southwest website where you can try and

get some information about where your bag might be and so that's another way that they're trying to help the customers who are understandably very frustrated, alex. >> look at those bags. okay. blayne alexander, thank you so much for the latest. jessie, i know you're there in buffalo where volunteers are gathering to help dig this community out. what are you seeing? >> reporter: yeah, alex, that underscores the situation we're still in. at this point about six full days after the blizzard first hit buffalo and amidst the ongoing cleanup efforts, there have been questions about why this has been taking so long. we have traffic out here on the roads right now. earlier this morning, they lifted the do not drive ban so people are allowed to be on the roads. people might be running out of medicine, food. again, it was going on the better part of a week that people were being told they should be staying at home and not being on the roads to run errands. because it's taken so long here, there have been questions raised about the cleanup efforts by officials as well as the

warnings that went out. if they went out soon enough, if they should have been announced earlier. and that has led to some finger-pointing amongst officials at the county and the city level in buffalo itself. there's a bit of a political element to this story unfolding as well. but the reality is the death toll continues to rise and police believe -- it's getting warmer. it's going to be even warmer tomorrow in the 50s. we're also expecting rain. so a lot of the snow that is still out here is going to be melting away and police believe when the snow melts, we're going to start finding more bodies here. i asked police last night at a briefing that was held late in the evening if they had an estimate. and they said that number to be in the low single digits based on people calling in thinking that someone would be dead and where the searches were conducted and all of that and where they weren't able to find anybody yet. it underscores the sad situation we're still dealing with.

but at the same time they call this the city of good neighbors. we have good neighbors coming out right now to lend a hand with elderly people still shuttered in. they may not be able to go out and shovel their driveway. with no one able to get to them for several days, you can imagine that they might still be trapped inside. >> i'm going to try to end on that positive note about the volunteers. there's a lot of uncertainty still to come. thank you so much for that. for more on all of this, i'm joined by buffalo, new york's, city council president. what a tough time this last week has been. tell us how the community is coming together in the wake of this crisis. >> well, buffalo is known as the city of good neighbors. i've been on the street almost every day except in the worst of the blizzard. and watching people helping one another even during the blizzard, the stories, the heart-wrenching stories of people who went out to even

retrieve some of the deceased and families thanking them. you had a woman who decided on the street and a man carried her to an awning so that she would be safe -- her body would be safe and be found and really not be -- her body destroyed. so these other stories you're hearing over and over, this is what buffalo is made of. we're resilient people. but this was a storm like none other. >> i'm glad you told that story. i read about it and the trauma from all of that will linger. that was a good samaritan who did that. this morning, sir, the mayor defended the city's response to the storm. however, the county executive is really calling out buffalo, accusing local officials there of being one step behind in this crisis. do you think the criticism is fair? >> well, let me say this, i have talked both to the mayor and to the county executive and there was a lot of emotion. and people were tired.

i'm going -- i'm not going to make an excuse for it. people are tired. even the public officials get to that breaking point. but i can tell you right now that both of them are working very hard. was there criticism that was put out there? yes. was it fair? i say no. and the reason is because at the end of the day this city got hit like it has never been hit before. and it's always easy to look back. but i think what people want, especially people who are under the same type of strain is forced to work together. and so i'm not going to point a finger or say, hey, he shouldn't have done this or the mayor should have done this. at the end of the day we're all here together and working. can we learn from this storm? absolutely. can we do better and will we do better? absolutely. i believe global warming is real. i believe that the patterns are changing. we have to have different

equipment than we've ever had to have. we have to have differentiate ways of notification than we ever had. but this city did notification almost every other hour to the citizens who would connect to the system that has been out there. this is a city that people were told, you must stay home. there were tragedies. but give me any hurricane, give me any tragedy across the world and will there be some deceased? yes. but i can't say this was a horrible response. >> well, i tell you very wise perspective there you're sharing. let me ask you with the temperatures beginning to rise as we look at so much snow as a result of this storm, what about the risk of flooding? >> again, we're going to have a risk of flooding. it has been said over and over, if you're in an area that is prone to flooding, the warnings have been put out there. if you do not prepare for that,

it is very difficult for the government to come and to save every household that may flood. so we have to get ready. it's going to be there. it's part of the storm. and at the end of the day, the city, the county, the state and the federal government have shown that we'll do what is in our power to help our citizens. we got to get ready and be prepared. >> i tell you very wise words throughout. thank you so much, sir. best of luck to you. the biden administration announced that starting january 6th a negative covid request will be required -- test result, rather, will be required for entry into the u.s. from china and hong kong. now we're getting images of crowded emergency room departments with crowds of people waiting to be seen. the chinese government is reporting about 5,000 cases a day. however, the u.s. says that

information is not transparent. joined by mike memoli to discuss all of this. give me a sense of what we know and what the administration is hoping to accomplish by requiring tests to travel from china. i believe everyone on a plane from age 2 and up has to test negative. >> reporter: that's right, alex. there are really two separate but related concerns on the part of the biden administration and other public health officials. as we're seeing cases rise around the world, really, but especially so in china. they lifted those much more restrictive zero covid policies and case levels have spiked there. and so we're seeing a return to some of these testing requirements that had been in place in the past relax this year. anybody traveling from china, hong kong, but also through three other airports, two in canada, one in south korea will be required to show negative test results to get into the

country. but there's another step they're taking which is surveillance on a voluntary basis. this is the concern there. that as potential new variants could be emerging, china has not been a reliable partner in being transparent about these. and so this will give american officials another tool to potentially trace new variants that could provide -- cause further risk to new variants emerging here in the u.s. what the u.s. wants is greater cooperation, greater transparent from chinese officials and the cdc officials who spoke to us yesterday said that's still not happening. >> yeah, okay. keeping close watch on that with your help. thank you so much. we're live in ukraine later on this hour where major cities across that war-torn country are facing a fresh wave of russian missiles attacks today. even a maternity ward struck in kherson. and what we expect to learn when former president trump's tax returns are released tomorrow. x returns are released tomorrow

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we have some breaking news from washington where the house january 6th committee has formally withdrawn its subpoena of former president trump. let's go right to ryan nobles to get some more. what can you tell us about this? this just went down? >> we do believe that this is kind of just a logistical issue, the january 6th committee basically clearing its deck as it wraps up its work.

but the committee did send a letter to the lawyer that was representing the former president donald trump in this particular instance which was the subpoena request and said to the lawyer that the committee was no longer in need and was no longer going to attempt to enforce the subpoena because the committee's work is all done. they've held all their hearings, issued they're final report. so kind of just the logistical process of continuing to seek a subpoena request from donald trump. so they have withdrawn the subpoena. there's likely a reason for doing this because there was a pending lawsuit that trump's attorneys has filed against the committee to try and prevent this subpoena from being enacted. that's why they're closing the book on this. now, the lawyer that was representing the former president, she is currently a candidate to become the next chair of the republican national committee. she's challenging the current chair, ronna mcdaniel. it's not expected that she's going to be successful in that

challenge. but she has been very active in her attempts to campaign against mcdaniel. she was bragging on twitter about the committee withdrawing the subpoena saying this was a huge legal victory for her and her team in their efforts to prevent what she called an illegitimate subpoena. it is important to point out, though, alex, that the court's never ruled on this, it never got to that stage. and it was really just a timing issue. you can, you know, ask a question about the timing of this because the committee chose not to subpoena the former president until the very end of their investigation. the subpoena didn't come down until the middle of october. it never seemed like a practical request on the part of the committee. but it's going to never happen. trump is going to face no consequences for not responding to the subpoena because the committee has officially withdrawn that request. >> it sounds kind of like it's cleared all the decks as they're wrapping everything up. that's what that's about. what about the transcripts, ryan, that continue to be

released? i'm thinking about that which we read from cassidy hutchinson's testimonies really stunning what she went through. what are we still learning? >> alex, just in the last ten minutes, the committee released another batch of transcripts, i think about 10 or 12 in total. and there are some really big names on this list. their interview of the former president's son donald trump jr. is in this batch, stephen miller, a high-ranking official in the trump administration, his transcript is in the group. there's a very interesting name that -- my brief reading of the transcript already has been relative have a story and that's the name of ray epps. if you pay any attention to the conspiracy theories that were banded about in the wake of january 6th, his name is a name that comes up over and over again. qanon supporters have claimed

that ray epps was a federal government plant that was put in place by the fbi as a way to encourage people to attack the capitol on that day. there's no evidence that that is true and the committee specifically said, they put out a press release around the time they interviewed ray epps saying they looked into his background and they were able to determine he wasn't an agent of the federal government and he played no role in people entering the capital on that day. as you look in the transcript, he says under oath and on the record, he had no involvement with the fbi or the federal government officials. this is just an example -- these are things that aren't necessarily going to make it into a final report but why the transcripts are so important because we're learning information we had not learned prior to that. >> i know what i'm going to be doing at noon and that's digging into the transcripts. thank you so much for getting me looking forward to that, ryan

nobles. let's turn now to positive news at the pump. the national average for a regular gallon of gas is currently $3.16. that is down about 40 cents from a month ago and 13 cents from a year ago. some experts are now expecting gas to be cheaper overall in the coming year. let's go to kerry sanders who is joining us from south florida. a few things i enjoy more than getting good news from you. what are drivers going to expect when they fill up at the pump? >> reporter: well, you know, it's so rare, alex, to talk about gas prices in a positive way. but indeed it looks like according to gas buddy that not only are the prices of gas going to be down, but they're going to be down for awhile. it won't be until around mid next year that we'll see price increases across the country. that means as the price is down, if you collectively take how much less we're spending in our nation on fuel, it's a savings of about $50 billion. but as i noted, with that good

news will come some bad news because around mid next year, the price of a gallon of gas will head up, well, just slightly north of $4 a gallon. in california, likely up to $7 a gallon. >> reporter: some positive news at the pump this morning. estimates for 2023 predict gas prices will be cheaper overall next year. >> i think i would be happy. >> reporter: if the price is down? >> right. >> reporter: and those savings are expected to be significant. on average, gas should cost nearly 50 cents less per gallon in 2023. the price of gas to may of next year is expected to be down, not up. you say? >> it's a welcome thing. >> reporter: welcomed for drivers here and across the country. after consistently high fuel prices dominated in 2022. a spike that set off recession alarm bells, worsened inflation and crushed consumer confidence. >> it's horrific.

it's absolutely horrific. what are you going to do? what are you going to do? >> reporter: between now and may of 2023, prices are expected to remain low. but gas buddy expects to see slight increases, again, during the warmer months due to summer travel. with prices potentially reaching the $4 per gallon mark. again in may, june, july and august. >> gas prices are very seasonal. as the weather starts to warm up starting in march, that's when we start to see americans getting outside more, demand for gasoline starts to accelerate. >> reporter: despite those summertime increases, americans should see more money leftover in their wallets after filling up their tanks. >> the average household is going to be spending $277 less on gasoline in 2023 than in 2022. >> reporter: the constant strain on americans' budget hopefully easing in the new year. when we stop and consider, like, how much gasoline is really part of our daily budget and what we

are always seemingly talking about, google releases one of their more popular searches in the year and this year among the most popular searches, gas prices near me. alex, that says it all. if this is good news, we'll take it. i can tell you it feels like about 15, 17 years ago i was standing at a gas station like this talking about how people were angry that the price of gas had gone over $2 a gallon. perspective. >> exactly, my friend. thank you for delivering it all for us. coming up next, russian missiles raining down on ukraine. the impact of the brand-new attacks as putin announces a meeting with a key ally. we have a meeting from kyiv right after the break. e a meeti right after the break.

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multiple regions of ukraine, including its capitol, kyiv, facing a massive russian missile attack. thursday, it happened targeting infrastructure. the air strikes wiping out power throughout the region. 90% are without power with nearly 40% also without power in the capital city of kyiv. in recent days, russia also stepping up its attacks in kherson where it struck a maternity ward. ukraine urging civilians to leave the region and spend the winter in safer areas to the north and east offering free passage on trains, shelter and cash payments to those who heed the call to evacuate. joining me right now from kyiv, matt bradley. i know the russian assaults are not letting up. what more have we learned about the attacks today? >> reporter: what's interesting about this, alex, they had been letting up. we had a reprieve of about two

or three weeks which was unusual. and then all of a sudden the other foot dropped. and this is kind of what president volodymyr zelenskyy had been warning about. he said that ukrainians should be expecting some other round of attacks before the new year. but, you know, for awhile it felt that this capital, this country, when it came to aerial attacks was being lulled into a moment of quiet and all of a sudden just this morning we woke up and heard that barrage. the interesting thing here is that most of those missiles, there were 69 that were launched all across the country, 54 of them were shot down by antimissile defense weapons from the ukrainians. a lot of those, important to note, are provided by the west. some of them are the significant s-300 system that is inherited from russia. most of those missiles never really struck their targets. when they did, as you mentioned, they hit the electricity infrastructure and that's something that's been a

reoccurring pattern by the russians. they're putting electricity and civilian infrastructure in the cross hairs. that's why we keep seeing rolling backouts throughout. the city of lviv, 90% of households without power. so it's a logistical nightmare for the ukrainian government and for these regional governments to go around and bring the lights back on. i went out today and visited two locations where, again, missiles didn't strike necessarily, but it was the site of debris that was falling after antimissile defense systems had launched and shot down these systems. we went to a children's playground, for example, where the debris had dropped onto the ground. it's not necessarily targeted. alex? >> okay, thank you so much for that, matt bradley. we appreciate that. joining us now to talk about these attacks in ukraine, we

have associate editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst david ignatius. always good to talk to you. russia continues to hit these critical infrastructure areas and they're doing it with the help of drones. how critical is the biden administration's efforts to stop iran from providing drones to russia? >> so, alex, the new reports of u.s. efforts to tackle that problem of the iranian drones, seemingly endless supply that russia's been getting from iran by finding ways to sanction iran, to cut off the supply, also the reports of conversations between the white house and israeli national security officials to see if we can -- if the u.s. can get israeli help to help ukraine defend itself. they know a lot about iranian drones obviously. would love to find ways to show that they're impotent in this conflict. i think there are efforts to target more precisely the

efforts where these drones are being launched. they've extraordinary targeting capabilities behind the scenes. those tools will be used to try to identify, attack, take out these drones and missiles that are causing so much damage to the infrastructure. but the basic picture is the one that your correspondent describes in kyiv in this cold winter, relentless russian exchange to take out infrastructure, make the people of ukraine suffer, prolong this war and the russians hope the ukrainian resolve will weaken. i don't think we're going to see that. >> i don't think we will either. let me move to the topic of the kremlin spokesman who says that vladimir putin is going to speaking with chinese president xi jingping tomorrow. it will happen via video conference. president xi has appeared somewhat cool on russia's military campaign in ukraine. what do you make of the timing

and what does this call, this connection with china say about putin's war? >> so the first thing to say is the chinese have been unhappy with russia's inability to conclude this campaign, this war in ukraine. we've had lots of reports of chinese comments to russia, to other third parties making clear that they're unhappy with this continuing for long. the chinese are not making efforts to supply russia with weapons or the material that could be used to make weapons. that's a surprise in some ways. but the chinese had been careful about not violating sanctions. that's been a frustration for putin. putin wants the no-limits partnership. they talked about that at the time that the war began. one thing that i'm curious about

is whether the chinese will try with other nations that are not directly involved in the war to encourage some kind of negotiating process. we have this interesting period over the last several weeks where putin and president zelenskyy of ukraine talked about their interest in having negotiations this winter, this spring. there seems to be no common ground for the moment. the russians want recognition of their annexation, the ukrainians want russian troops out. but that's one thing the chinese might want to talk about tomorrow with putin. >> perhaps there will be some influence. prior to that call, it doesn't look like there's any common ground at all to your point. david, thank you so much for, sir, for your time. still to come, our political panel is here to break down what we could learn when donald trump's tax returns from 2015 to 2020 are released tomorrow. we're also going to talk about the bipartisan blowback against george santos who lied about his higher education, as well as

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specially designed for people with high blood pressure. be there for life's best moments. trust coricidin. we're about to get our hands on several years of former president donald trump's tax returns. the house ways and means committee says those documents will be released tomorrow at noon. the panel initially planned to make them public last week but the disclosure was delayed as staffers redacted sensitive personal information like social security numbers, of course. the committee obtained the returns in november after years of court fights that went all the way to the u.s. supreme court. so allie raffa was going to join us. we hope to get her shortly with all of that. meantime -- she's gotten there. great. glad you made it in time. let's talk about this and get a sense of what we can expect to see when those returns are released. >> yeah, alex, to say these releases are a long time coming would really be an

understatement because of the timeline you just laid out there. this has been a decades-long tradition that former president trump and his administration really pushed to the side and it took a lengthy legal battle that went as high as the supreme court for these committees to be able to access these documents last month. last week, we saw some summaries come out about the tax returns, not the actual returns themselves because of what these committees say was more time needed to redact sensitive information before releasing them publicly. and two big headlines that came out of those summaries was the fact that, number one, trump paid barely any federal income tax during the years 2016 and 2017. then none at all in 2022. and the second one is that the irs didn't actually start auditing those tax returns until the ways and means committee requested these records from the irs in 2019. more than two years into trump's

presidency. so, of course, there's a lot of curiosity building as to what more could be gleaned from these tax returns when they are released. but this is really the ways and means committee putting their foot down, using the less than a week that they have left in control of this committee to say that this shouldn't be able to happen to any other president ever again. as a matter of fact, they're trying to codify that process of auditing by the irs into law during this next congress. >> okay. allie raffa, thank you very much for the setup. we continue this discussion right now with a closer look at more political headlines. david jolly and former maryland democratic congresswoman donna edwards. both david and donna are msnbc political analysts. welcome to you both. david, give me a sense of what you're looking at from trump's tax returns. >> here's why it matters and why donald trump should be worried. it all goes to what we saw in a manhattan courtroom earlier this month when the trump organization, the business, was

convicted of criminal tax fraud and the cfo admitted that as part of that fraud, he had not paid taxes on his personal income. the trump organizations are private organizations, a lot of money passes through to senior leadership. and in that case, the cfo said i avoided taxes for years through fraud, through criminal fraud. the question is, did donald trump do the same thing? what tax experts will be looking at is how was the corporate money flowing through to donald trump personally and was donald trump actually paying the taxes he should have paid? that goes to the question of why was he not audited as his predecessors in the white house had been? this is a tough moment for donald trump and the tax experts will make sure we know about it in the coming weeks. >> yeah, i think you've put it all in perspective there. let's move on to another controversy surrounding george santos. now that this has turned into a legal matter with an investigation by nassau county and the new york district

attorney, how concerned should he be? >> well, i think he should be very concerned. i think especially around the campaign financing, the questionable loans to his campaign, the fact that he showed, you know, $55,000 worth of income in one year and then hundreds of thousands, even a million dollars in another year. these should be very troubling for george santos. some of the other lies that he told -- and i won't call them embellishment because they were lies, may land him in hot water should he be seated on january 3rd into the congress in terms of an ethics committee investigation. but these money troubles may, in fact, land him with a criminal indictment even as he takes his seat into congress. >> yeah, which many have suggested is inevitable at this point. what happens after that is another thing. right now, david, you have elected officials, community

leaders, other people in santos's district, they're holding a news conference to call on kevin mccarthy and other authorities to investigate santos. the nassau county da, new york's attorney general, they're also looking into him. how should republican party leadership be dealing with his situation? >> well, they should be speaking out and denouncing santos and all of his lies and that starts with kevin mccarthy. someone who will not speak out against him because he wants his vote to be speaker. donna is right, the only way a congressional tenure ends for santos before the next election would be a criminal indictment. house precedent suggests that he would need to resign. but shy of that, the house has this very, you know, flexible policy of saying we trust people in home districts to elect the person they want. the house is not the administrator of whether or not they were lied to.

there's a house with a very small margin over democrats. they probably will do nothing to defend him in two years. shy of an indictment, he may serve two years before new york's third district voters have a chance to vote him out. >> extraordinary. donna, you told nicolle wallace that the santos brand is actually now the republican brand. can you explain what you meant by that? >> it is. we started out, of course, with a president of the united states in the name of donald trump who lied his way into the presidency and continues that kind of falsehood, denying the election, and that has really become the brand of the republican party. and i think that the only way that they can -- is to call people into question like george santos and other members who have engaged in unethical behavior. but i think that there is every likelihood that that is not going to happen.

and so, you know, forget the old conservative brand of the republican party which i disagreed with tons. this is a party that now has thrown away any calls for values and ethics and morality in public service and it's going to be hard for them to i think continue to gain the trust of the public in that way. >> gotcha. quickly, david, you mentioned something yesterday on the broadcast and i wasn't able to follow up with lack of time. but you keep saying that kevin mccarthy is not going to be elected speaker. you have your money on steve scalise. do you know something we don't? >> yeah, math. the momentum on capitol hill right now is clearly moving towards a speaker steve scalise and a broader question whether kevin mccarthy resigns from the house, is he in office at all a year from now. can steve scalise get to 218? he'll need george santos and

matt gaetz and the others. >> a cast of characters right there. coming up next between bomb cyclones, thousand-year floods and fires, climate was front and center in 2022. we're going to take a look back at the very real impact that climate change has had on our world this past year and the fears that things could only get worse in years to come.

(classical piano music) - [reporter] one of the deadliest mass shootings in us history at pulse nightclub in orlando. - [barbara] walking into the building for the first time after the shooting, it was crippling,

but it had to be preserved. if you are an ally of this community, speak out. there are more of us together than apart. it is the power of love in its rawest form. (classical piano music) even if you like a house, lowball the first offer. the house whisperer! this house says use the realtor.com app to see three different estimates. also, don't take advice from people who don't know what they're talking about. realtor.com to each their home. 2020 was a year that saw weather bring catastrophic damage and record breaking conditions around the globe. the wild weather ran the gamut. according to the national oceanic and atmospheic administration.

with the deadly bomb cyclone that swept across the country this past week, the numbers will go up. >> 2022, a violent year of climate and weather extremes. from heat waves and drought to catastrophic flooding and hurricanes, the impacts reverberating around the globe. so far this year, $15 billion weather disasters hit the u.s., according to noaa. the final count yet to be tallied. the first billion dollar disaster came in the spring when warmer temperatures fuelled 3 deadly tornado outbreaks in as many weeks. >> run, run, run! >> spawning more than 200 tornadoes across more than a dozen states. >> it's devastating. all your hard work is gone up in the air. >> in the west, sections of yellowstone national park were

devastated by destructive flash floods. roads were washed away. the park closed to the public for the first time in three decades. climate change causing the atmosphere to be warmer and wetter, making conditions ripe for these types of events. >> it was very surprising how quickly it came. >> this summer was a story of extremes. europe had its most intense heat wave in recorded history. london set a historic all-time high of 104 degrees. back in the u.s., six 1,000 year floods occurred in the span of five years in july and august. places like st. louis, dallas and eastern kentucky deluged with eight to 15 inches of rain in just 24 hours. death valley received its entire year's worth of rain in just three hours. the footprint of climate change leaving its mark across nearly the entire u.s. parts of the west baked in the most severe heat ever recorded in the month of september. >> i have never dealt with

something this hot before. >> nearly 300 weather stations hitting their hottest temperatures in places like salt lake city, reno and sacramento. already extreme drought conditions in the region worsened. lake mead plunged to its lower yet. a tier two water shortage declared. after a slow start to the hurricane season, category 4 ian roared ashore southwest florida with winds topping 150 miles per hour. tieing for the fifth strongest hurricane ever to strike the united states. neighborhoods in ft. myers and naples left in ruin. warmer waters are acting as jet fuel causing the storms to rapidly intensify. just as this season was coming to a close, category i nicole was the first november hurricane to make landfall in nearly 40 years. scientists attribute this to warmer sea surface temperatures

in the atlantic. this year running up to 3.5 degrees above average. >> it's the nail in the coffin. ian came in and did all this damage and now nicole is just putting us away. >> in upstate new york, winter arrived early when a massive november snowstorm rewrote history books, burying neighborhoods and the buffalo bills stadium under 80 inches of snow. >> there's nothing in the store. you can't get a loaf of bread or anything. >> similar to last year, a series of deadly cool season tornadoes ripped through the south. more than 100 reported over two weeks across seven states between thanksgiving and christmas. >> my house is gone. >> the december twisters part of a massive week-long cross-country storm that dropped four feet of snow in the west, brought blinding blizzard conditions to the upper midwest and dozens of tornadoes to the south. then a historic and deadly bomb

cyclone crippled half the country over the holidays, bringing with it plummeting temperatures, blizzard conditions lasting nearly 40 hours and 50 inches of snow. the storm pushed buffalo into the record books. 100 inches and counting. >> extraordinary there. that does it for me after this very busy two hours. i will see you tomorrow at noon eastern.

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good day. here are your top stories at this hour. another massive wave of flight cancellations for southwest airlines customers today as the carrier tries to convince future customers that another meltdown won't impact travel in the new year. the latest from ukraine after russian missile strikes on major cities, including kyiv, causing massive power outages along with the kremlin's rebuke of president zelenskyy's peace plan. the pressure on george santos is no longer just political. the new york republican under investigation for a laundry list of false claims during his successful midterm campaign. we will begin with the chaos surrounding southwest as