but that's not thetorm. our wind will carry that system out to sea. southern rockies, moving into the plain states. this is a weather system that is loaded up with energy and wants to grab some moisture out of the gulf of mexico and reaches the eastern seaboard, then the storm really intensifies. so it's still not a question of will there be a storm. yes, there definitely will be. it's the track that have storm once it gets to the virginia coastline, with i will happen saturday morning. the whole time we'll have cold high pressure. it'll be with us here in new england for a few more days. just how strong that high pressure is and how much it prevents the storm from moving north. right now i'm still leaning on a more southerly track. we talked about this last night. two possible tracks, track one up toward new england when walpole had heavy snow but i still think track 2 is the one that we'll lean on which will keep the heaviest of the snow south of new england. the heavy snow risk will be centered in the mid atlantic states, washington d.c., baltimore, philadelphia in particular. and once you get into new york

the risk of heavy snow really drops off. the challenge with these powerhouse storms is that usually on the northern edge, which new england is going to be, there is a drastic cut-off. i mean, like all or nothing going from flurries to 6 inches of snow in just a few miles. so that's what we're up against right now. still trying to pin down where that cut-off is to the storm. and the timing of the storm would be late in the day saturday, more likely saturday nights and early sunday morning. so a plowable snow, meaning 2 inches. i think it's possible in boston, 1 to 3 inches of snow possible late saturday evening, saturday night. i don't think it's likely north of the pike. i think you might have some flurries merrimack valley, cape ann, worcester hills and the area most likely to meet shovels and plows that would be plymouth over toward fall river down foot south coast buzzard's bay region, 2, 4, 6 inches of snow likely in those locations late saturday night and sunday morning. the other concern will be the possibility of minor coastal

we'll talk more about that in a few minutes. >> let's go to play-off preparations now full swing. patriots getting back to work today. practice being held inside. most players present and accounted for, which is good news for a team that's been nursing injuries for most of this season. but getting ready for a big rival is never an easy task. >> the defense facing a tough task, and that is of course stopping peyton manning. we have team 7 coverage down at gillette including more from tom brady and bill belichick as well as the players back at practice today. but we will begin our coverage with the new england patriot who has been tackling trouble off the field. today darius flemming revealed his role in roadside rescue, the linebacker actually played saturday's game against kansas city with 22 stitches in his leg. >> he hurt himself helping a woman escape from a wreck on a walpole road. 7's byron barnett with that story from gillette. byron. >> well, you know, this is becoming a regular occurrence with the patriots.

who saved a woman right after the afc championship game. now it's patriots linebacker darius fleming, and he's being called a hero. she couldn't get out and then that's what made me think to help her. >> reporter: darius flemming says he didn't hesitate to leap into action and save a woman from a burning car. >> i saw her panic on her face because when the smoke was inside, she wanted to get out the car. i started kicking the window and eventually it broke and i pulled her out. and my leg was bleeding pretty bad so i thought i should get out of here and take care of my leg. >> reporter: flemming says it was driving home from practice last thursday and it was on route 1 north in walpole, the 26-year-old linebacker says he pulled up behind the woman right after she was involved in a three-car crash. >> i kicked the window --

out before my leg was out. >> i don't even know who the lady/honestly. honestly, once i got out of the car and she said thank you, i said you're welcome and saw my leg and got out of there. >> reporter: flemming says he got 22 stitches in his leg. he went tonight play in saturday's game against the chiefs. news of his heroics travel the fast. his high school in chicago posted his plaque, praising his good deed, and his teammates say they were so impressed they made him give a speech on it. the we're all pretty proud of remarkable. >> do you feel like a hero? >> no, i'm just glad lives there and was able to help. >> we have just gotten word that the walpole police chief has confirmed the whole story. worried about what bill belichick would say about all this but says the coach was fine

injury did not affect his play against the chiefs. that's the story live in gillette stadium, i'm byron barnett, 7news. tonight we're learning more about the crash from walpole police. the town's police chief just spoke about the accident. for that let's go to jonathan hall who's live outside the story. >> as byron just mentioned, the police chief confirmed a three-car crash that happened on route 1 northbound at fox hills drive at 4:18 on thursday flemming said. minor collision, however. he says there was no sign of a car fire or mention of a patriots player helping a trapped woman in the police department. however, when role call happened today, they asked around and officers did confirm the incident and the chief says he wishes flemming had stayed on site so police could have thanked him for his bravery. the deputy chief talked to the woman who was in the car, and

and even ad through the patriots roster online and tried to figure out which man save heard. she did not catch his name, but apparently he was not on the active roars list. at least that's what she thinks, so she wasn't able to find flemming. police officials again originally didn't know if a patriots player was involved. there were a lot of things said online, and fellowshipping tweeted this not too long ago. people are quick to try and bring you down, so sad. once again, people are quick to try to bring you down, so sad. but once again, a true story and certainly a great moment for this young man with a star on the field and in this woman's view a star off the field on route 1, as well. we're live in walpole, i'm jonathan hall, 7news. and as you know, this isn't the first time a patriots player has helped in a dangerous situation. remember this, it was last year vince wilfork pulled a woman from her car when it rolled over. it was right after the team's afc championship win and she had

crashed near gillette stadium. when police got there, they found wilfork had already help heard to safety. after flemming teammates took time to praise the linebacker's actions, they were quick to put the focus back on football. our sports director joe amorosino here with more on what tom brady is saying about being back in familiar territory. >> no shortage of subplots and story lines headed into the afc championship game but one that overshadows them all is brady-manning 17, the latest perhaps the end to the final of football's greatest rivalry. the job of the defenses, speaking of, the patriots got both jamie collins and chandler jones back at today's walk-through, good news when it comes to slowing down manning and denver's dangerous running backs. brady has all the respect in the world for his long-time faux, especially considering how many times they've done battle. >> i think playing someone 17

especially someone as great as him and to play against by aton manning, the team, you know you gotta play 60 minutes and will be in for a tough game. >> brady not the only patriot singing peyton manning's praising today. 7's alex corddry reporting live from foxboro on what the rest of the patriots have to say about the future of hall-of-famer. alex. >> hey, joe. peyton manning is 7 and 12 patriots. two of those wins have come in the postseason. belichick talking today, and it's clear he has a huge amount of respect for 18. >> there isn't a player off our team that i have any more respect for than peyton manning. his skills. i would never, ever, ever underestimate him under any circumstances. >> reporter: it comes from bill belichick as he prepares to beat

league. >> nobody seems to appreciate the manning tom brady rivalry more than belichick. but at the end of the day, the only team his team focuses focuses is on is trying to get a win. >> reporter: devin mcchordy says the pats aren't taking manning lightly even though he hasn't been himself this season because they can't overlook his superior football brain. >> an afc championship game with the opportunity to try to advance into the super bowl, you know, you can't ask for a better challenge and going against two the greats, and if you deserve to be there, you gotta go out there and prove it sound. >> reporter: and mile high is where the patriots must go through to get to their ultimate goal but brady says it won't be easy. >> i know we've had a lot of pretty lonely feelings when you drive out of that stadium and we've had some pretty tough loss there is over the years. because they've had really good teams. >> now, brady's 22 and 8 over

hopes it's this time to shine once again, he knows it's going to be a tough battle and told united states today he's going to have to have the best game of the season on sunday. live in foxboro, alex corddry, 7news. >> manning takes on belichick and brady coming up on 7news at 6:00. reporting live in the newsroom, joe amorosino, 7news. for some of the patriots' biggest stars, balance is a really important part of the job, and today tom brady opening up about how he splits time being a dad and one of the best quarterbacks in the league. 7's dan hausle live at gillette now with that part the patriots story. >> well, brady and a lot of the players talk about their family inside the locker room, but they all have families at home and they say brady included, they help them do their jobs.

that we rarely see, t b-12 married man and father. they admit the need to take care of things at home doesn't go away. >> our daughters getting any sleep at night and you're up, you know, it's just -- it's part of being parents and dealing with things at home and stuff. >> reporter: veteran matthew slater is just getting used to life with a newborn son. he says there's no time to dillydally around the locker room anymore talking football. >> my wife's the mvp. she's really being great about that, allowing me to take care of the business here that i need to, but, you know, my family will always be the most important thing to me. >> reporter: brady says things are getting an antibiotic easy for him now that his youngest is out of diapers. at the same time, brady would be the first to admit, along with his supermodel wife, he's got a

typical two-income family. >> family is a difficult part of life and to add it to a busy football schedule, it's a lot of give and take. takes a lot of support to help. >> and brady has talked about how he's going to be happier as a family man when he's had more success here on the field. we're live in foxboro, dan hausle, 7news. dan, thank you. and just a reminder, joe and trey are both off to denver for the big game. you can look for their live reports beginning tomorrow right here on 7news. a frightening situation at more massachusetts schools today prompting an intense search in methuen. police lined up student's backpacks as you three and then brought in bomb-sniffing dog. 7's steve cooper live in methuen where the investigation continues there tonight. >> a lot of unsettling moments here, methuen high and one of the reasons why is because of the threats. they were emailed to a teacher here at high school including

shooting at police police and officials wasted no time evacuating the high school. >> it was really terrifying but they have to search my stuff. >> reporter: hundreds of backpacks of all shapes and sizes layed out on the sidewalk and being inspected for bombs. all this after methuen high is evacuated this morning after a teacher receives a threatening email from a man promising to shoot police, and that's not all. so on a brutally cold january day, 2000 students are evacuated from a high school and temporarily housed at two nearby elementary schools where classes were canceled for the day. in tewksbury, the high school for the second day in a row was a bomb threat all the public schools put the buildings into lock-down. state police say last friday 24 schools across the state have

threats. >> someone thinks this is funny and spends 10 years in the federal prison are in a state prison in massachusetts. i don't think they'll find that funny. >> are the threats coming up in the state or out of state? are they coming from inside the country or out of the country. that's something the fbi is trying to figure out right now. live in methuen tonight, steve cooper, 7news. and we're following breaking news on wall street. stocks trying to recover from an early plunge but coming up short. the dow did bounce back a bit from the initial 500 point slip. at the final bell it was down 249 points to 15,766. the chaotic day comes as the price of oil suffered its worst one-day drop since september. investigators are worried that low oil prices are having a negative impact on the global me. and still to come tonight, an actor finds himself in the center of real life drama. >> when we come back, cameras rolling as a grateful father gets to thank jamie foxx for

and fighting the opiate he democrat. the new strategy the state is trying to push to combat addiction. plus, the celebrities stepping in to help a michigan city deal with an ongoing water and then in just one hour, we have more patriots coverage as new england prepares for the play-offs, including what tom brady is saying about today's crybaby cover story. and a robbery spree spoiled by a selfie. how this snapshot led to a man's arrest. those stories and a lot more

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an oscar winning actor stepping into a heroic role but this wasn't on the big screen. jamie foxx is credited with saving the life of a man who got trapped inside a burning car. the star showing real courage under fire. >> he braved flames as well to get this man out to safety, and we are hearing from a very grateful father tonight. 7's nancy chen with the story. >> as the flames do come in, i leaned back but i think what it did, it hit his legs which made them extend, your son was a fighter. >> reporter: after jamie foxx embraced the father of a a man who pulled him from awrn being truck likely saved his life. >> i think we all hope we could do something when the time is, there you but the with question is do we act or fear our own ?rifs and he did not. >> reporter: police say

speeding and driving under the influence when he swerved off the road and hit a drainage ditch, causing his truck to flip several times. it came to a stop in front of fox's mansion near los angeles, and then burst into flames. >> as i'm getting hip out, i say you gotta help me get you out because i don't want to have to leave you. i said you've got angels around you. >> reporter: kyle's family calls foxx a guardian angel. he's humble about his heroic actions. >> i don't look at it as heroic, i just look at it as -- you know, you just had to do something and it all worked out. >> reporter: brad kyle went to foxx's home tuesday to see the scene of the accident. the actor brought him inside and showed him surveillance video of the crash. >> i just kept watching it and going my god, my god. he didn't have to do a thing. >> reporter: nancy chen, 7news. and coming up next at 5:30, a smoke show. a miami valet learned a hard

someone else's car. >> we've got partly cloudy skies for tonight, and then the potential for some snow this weekend. i'll show you how much, here in the city, parking is hard to find. seems like everyone drives. and those who do should switch to geico because you could save hundreds on car insurance. ah, perfect. valet parking. x evening, sir. hello! here's the keys. and, uh, go easy on my ride, mate. hm, wouldn't mind some of that beef wellington... to see how much you could

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first time this winter we've had three consecutive days featuring colder than normal temps. so, yeah, a bit of a shock to the system. still some wind out there. windchills running in the teens to around 20. the wind will fade away, partly cloudy skies tonight. lows in the upper teens to around 20. we finish the week on a bright note, mostly sunny skies tomorrow. still a bit of a chilly breeze tomorrow. low 30s. friday the number is also below normal. we spent the first half of the winter saying if we just had cold air with these storms, they'd be snowstorms. if we just had cold air. now we have the cold air but what that cold air might do is actually shove the storm and keep it south of new england, right on the northern edge. that thought process has not changed since last night and when you have these big storms, which we will have in the middle atlantic states, on the northern edge, there's usually a sharp cut-off to where you have the snow, and the timing still looks like it's late saturday evening and overnight saturday night. but again, i don't think there's anything otherring coming our way. if you have travel plans during the day saturday in new england,

if you're heading out of new england south, different story. huge storm down there friday and saturday. and then you notice here as we get into the day on saturday, the storm really has a tough time making in roads up into new england. so the high risk of seeing significant snow, the 95 corridor from new york city southbound through washington d.c. and locations south of there. city of boston and north, i don't think there's much coming our way. this is the first go-around for our snowfall forecast. probably a coating to an inch in downtown boston. as you work down the southshore, 1, 2, perhaps 3 inches of snow and buzzard's bay be the south coast, 3 to 6 inches. we might even fine-tune this even more because again that drastic cut-off might have 3 to 6, 1 to 3 and may have nothing in the city of boston, and i am most confident here that a few flurries north of route 2, merrimack valley, southern new hampshire, probably nothing more than that. the other concern will be the wind because that combining with the as symptom can high tides,

saturday and 11:00 a.m. high tide on sunday might lead to minor coastal flooding, especially 11:00 a.m. high tide on sunday because of the wind saturday night. regardless of the fact that we're not getting much snow, there will be a lot of wind generated from this storm, out of the northeast, gusting 35, perhaps as high as 50 miles per hour on cape cod and that will lead to some splashover at the time of the high tide and minor coastal flooding and possibly moderate coastal flooding along the southshore. something we'll have to weekend. 7 on 7 forecast, light snow likely mainly south of town, saturday night and sunday morning otherwise as we look into the next week, whatever snow we get, we're gonna melt. low 40s tuesday and wednesday. >> still ahead at 5:30, a heart-stopping car crash in australia. a woman just barely escapes a nearly catastrophic collision. >> plus criminals try to steal this car and there are kids inside.

>> there's another hour of 7news straight ahead. i'm adam williams. >> i'm jim casey. 5:30. >> now at 5:30, the patriots looking to make history. >> we feel like we're one of the best teams, they feel like they're the best team. you know, that's why it makes for a great game. >> tom brady and familiar faux. >> cold for the the next couple of days and then a potential storm for the weekend. >> and federal and state officials joining together to