honching -- honking in the area. >> it's almost as if people are trying to get the lead. forget anything we've learned in driver education. at the end of the day, brake pad and sheet metal is no substitution for hitting somebody. i really hope they give people a break. >> reporter: very important. so we've gotten an update. bge crews have been trying to get this tree out of the way. what we understand is this work will happen tonight and bge will come back in and put in a new transformer. there are 500 customers affecting by this outage alone. from what i understand tomorrow at noon you'll be back on in the stevenson and balloon na aeroour don harrison was out in anne

arundel today. >> the sounds of thunder and rain were replaced with this. the highways blew trees down. over 2600 bge workers, 1200 from out of state were busy for a third day in a row to help bring power and relief back to customers. water restrictions are in effect because of power outages to the water treatment plants. they don't want homeowners to have excess water use. so wart will be available in case of an emergency. >> reporter: along with the men and women trying to get your electricity back on, the police are busy handling all kinds of accidents because the traffic

lights are out. tessa west was involved in one of the accidents. she was rear ended at 197 and laurel. president didn't has added to the frustration of not having electricity for three days. >> everything in the refrigerator is gone. over $200 worth of groceries. >> reporter: that's not all. >> no cable, no lights, can't cook. >> reporter: and there's more. >> i have a son who has asthma. so i haven't been able to keep him here. it's been tough. >> reporter: they spend a lot of time in the car with the ac on and that wastes gas. being without electricity for this long makes you realize how essential power is. >> to keep a lot of things on track. >> reporter: in laurel, don harrison, abc2 news. >> just under 40,000 are still without electricity. bge said some customers in anne arundel county may have their power out through the end of the

week. nothing smells manager like orange extension cords. if are a using a portable generator, only use it outside. we almost lost people in prince george's county when someone put a generator on a porch and that almost led to carb carb. another one caused a fire. when in doubt, throw it out. by now you should have raided the frej. if you don't open the door, the food could last for three hours. the health department is also shutting down restaurants without power who were serving food. so many factors for people without power to deal with.

it could be a plot worse. the humidity has relented. we have air temps in the low 90s. that makes for a tolerable heat index. i just mean it's better than areas to the west. feels like 101 in st. louis. 102 in memphis. that is set to drift in our direction. in the meantime, at least this evening down in the 80s with relatively low humidity, not perfect but better than it could be. >> some homeowners under evacuation orders for weeks are finally being allowed to return home to parts of colorado. for some the damage has already been done. people from the hardest hit areas of colorado springs are being allowed back for the very first time. >> we feel maybe it would be more hard, more difficult for us if part of the house was there and we are going to have to

sarming -- salvage things. we are thinking we will have to rent a u haul and that is not the case there. is nothing left. >> many of the people returning home, including this couple, plan to rebuild in the same community. terrifying moments to show you as a house fire broke out in essex. at first reports were coming in that three kids were trapped inside. s that turned out yaffle h--- thankfully, the kids were not home. >> i within the to the back, kicked in the back room. that's the laundry room. i ran about halfway up the stairs and yelled for the kids and i didn't hear anything, then

the fire met us about halfway. >> the fire on the secondhand third floors of the home. firefighters were able to put it out by 9:00 this morning. the grandmother was taken to a leal hospital for observation. all right. he's wanted for -- up and down the east coast for an annapolis avenuer. investigator joce sterman has the latest on this man, tommy clack. the man suspected of running a paving scam in four states. he's down south setting up old cases. tonight's investigation shows it may be the least of his problems. >> this judgment day will come. this guy needs to be in jail. consumers should not have to deal with this type of person who continues to violate the law time and time and time again. >> tonight at 11, who's joining forces and when he could be heading pack to maryland. more on the tommy clack story.

you think lebron can make incredible shots? we'll he is you some of the insane tricks this young boy can pull off with a ping pong. losing your job can leave you short on cash and you might miss out on a few days. we'll tell you which gender has more trouble finding love without a paycheck. you can download storm shield like we had this weekend. you can find the temperature where you are, annapolis, westminster, law enforcement. you pick the spot and you can get the exact air temperature. we'll have much more coming up in a few minutes. ♪

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a storm whipped through chicago. with the wind came sheets of torrential rain. it's not fun to be caught in this mess in chicago. all right. this is little tommy spicer. he's nine years old and is a ping pong trick master. tom's dad grabbed the camera like you would and shows us what he could do. it suggests there will be more videos coming soon. ping pong anywhere. all right. it's been days, and someplace

lock like the -- look like the storm moved through. the damage and when we can expect things to get back to normal. plus, how is the supreme court's ruling playing in the healthcare law. trying to get ac back and the hot steamy conditions drifting back to maryland. we'll talk about the timing when the humidity comes back.

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i took my son fishing every year. we had a great spot, not easy to find, but worth it. but with copd making it hard to breathe, i thought those days might be over. so my doctor prescribed symbicort. it helps significantly improve my lung function starting within five minutes. symbicort doesn't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. with symbicort, today i'm breathing better. and that means...fish on! symbicort is for copd including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. with copd, i thought i'd miss our family tradition. now symbicort significantly improves my lung function, starting within 5 minutes. and that makes a difference in my breathing.

today, we're ready for whatever swims our way. ask your doctor about symbicort. i got my first prescription free. call or click to learn more. [ male announcer ] if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. we want to check and see if the power is back on. some counties are fairing better than they were. let's run them down. anne arundel county 3,000. baltimore county 69,000. baltimore city 59,000. howard, carroll and harford are

starting to come back online. when a trough falls in baltimore, everybody knows about it. joce sterman is on northern parkway. pel are living in tree houses, aren't they? >> absolutely. they have no way out unless they want to sneak out the back. this is not just one tree. this is one, two, three, four that have fallen down on the 1100 block of east parkway. these trees, for some of them, come all the way up to the doorway. the only lady had can get out is on the corner, miss judy. her neighbor is in the able to get out. the the whole way. just about 10 minutes ago a representative from the city was here and they have put in the official order to deal with these trees. that's good news. bad news is those guys still don't have power, so they're sweating inside their houses and the worst news is these four

trees provided them a great deal of shade and guess what, they are gone for good. so they're dealing with a lot, but they're within set of neighbors dealing with a lot. we saw cars that were crushed by trees in some neighborhoods. the good news we saw power crews out from massachusetts, connecticut, of course bge workers. they have a full set of people working with it. fingers crossed this will not last much longer. they have a lot to deal with. it will not be an easy couple of days to deal with. >> what did the city rep say? >> reporter: they had to put in an official order that the work needs to be done. they have trees done here. acorring -- according to the people who live here, these are city trees. that's why the city may be responsible for the work. they have no idea how long this takes. i will guess on a priority

level, it's probably midway. they chan get out through the back, so we've given them our phone numbers. we want to hear when they're finally able it get out. they're scaling trees and risking life and limb just to get out. wander around. so not so grate. >> just tack our 5:00 -- take our 5:00 newscast and film that. there's your order. >> i was here friday night. we saw this around 8:00, 9:00 in western maryland. looks like the storms were losing strength as they went over the high country. as soon as they took that dip, i moon, themes things punched new a hurry, so we knew we had a situation. we had reported wind gusts over 70, bwi, d.c. >> after the lightning and the thunder, then it seemed like

this calmed down. >> this term duratio. one of the most intense parts of the bow but this is a large line of damaging straight line winds and nobody misses it. you hear the thunder. you get the rain and that gust coming through. we got a link to it on my facebook page, all about it and this is what there looks like by day. nobody saw this except out in the midwest where the storm came out of. it gives you real detailed look. head over to facebook and as you scroll down, if you're interested and lost power, you can go back on my facebook page and see that duratio. that's a look at it, so just an incredible setup that we were dealing with that night, to have

you go back and look at the archive if you'd like to do that. we expect to stay clear for thunderstorms. we're looking fine there. the chance for storms comes back into early wednesday and some of those could be gusty and strong. so cope a sharp eye toward mid-week. the humidity has been lower. we've seen humidity dropping on a are in the breeze. this is not spring or fall. this is not a cool north breeze. it's still hot but anything that stirs the air is good. anything that doctors the humidity values, the dew point numbers dropping from really the state line from virginia, dulles north. as we get toward patuxent river, it gets muggy. the steamy conditions are not far away, but for now we'll take a little bit of a dry slot. although it's still hot, at

least it's not oppressively hot with the heat, humidity combination that we could easily have right now and we don't have it at least for the rest of the evening. no storms anywhere in the mid-atlantic. that's good. to the south and west there are storms across the midwest and mid-south. this is the most intense areas of heat. as that begins to push further east, which we think it will toward the mid to latter part of the week, yeah, it's going to be a steamer again. there are those highs in the upper 90s. we'll slide further east. we're still in the low 90s tomorrow. the humidity comes up, but as we go go into the 4th of july, this is where the heat and humidity begins to push up. you see it as high as 103. the chances for storms slim tonight, tomorrow until we get into overnight tomorrow night and into the part of the day on 4th of july.

overnight 70, a few clouds. tomorrow we'll go with low 90s again. would the -- downtown mid-90s. i did bump up the 4th of july to the mid-90s. we look for upper 90s as we go into the weekend. the heat will be coming back. so will the humidity. en joy some relatively dry heat if you can. >> the power is on. last week's supreme court ruling on healthcare come from nateed the political discussion but will it have an impact on our november election. tory dunnan joins us from washington. i'm excited about the numbers. what's the reaction from potential voters? >> reporter: interestingly it seems to be split. there's a brand-new poll this. shows 5% of registered pollers agree with the supreme court's

ruling. 49% des aagreement the big question is is it smart for republicans to focus in on this issue between now and november. you have to close look at the polls. what it shows us only 20% of registered voters are actually angry about that decision which came down. >> how much of an impact did it have on the race for the white house? >> reporter: well, so far, ted zero impact. you want to take a look at the numbers. it shows president obama is leading romney 49% to 46%, the exact same numbers from back in may. it seems the democrats may have a bit of an edge when this comes to enthusiasm. 59% said they're extremely enthusiastic. for republicans it's 51%. the cnn/orc went to 15 key battleground states and all of a sudden the story changes.

mitt romney has the edge when youd a in those key states. in the end this really comes down to a few swing states. >> thank you so much. coming up tonight at 6:00, there are still downed trees, power lines. we will take a look at what you should and should not do. we want you to stay safe. >> plus a new scam is trying to trick one. this one really seems legit. those stories and more coming up at six. now here's a preview of what's ahead on world knolls at 6:30. >> that extreme heat and also that high profile split. what now about the coach of scientology, all coming up. ♪

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all right. you get your property tax bit. the postal service is closing dozens of mail processing plants. we have more on what this means for you. >> reporter: there's no secret the u.s. postal service is struggling with its balance sheet. usps is moving forward with con sal dation -- consolidations. they are the big facilities where mail gets sorted. the union made halas ditch effort to stop but the

commission denied the request. it will affect about 5,000 workers but many will be offered new jobs elsewhere or retirement podges. for now zoo worry about the package you -- don't worry about the package you just mailed. the next phase will slowdown the first class mai. the post sal service posted a $5 billion loss last year so the consolidations are the latest attempt to stroll line the service and keep it alive. reporting from new york. >> it is july the 2nd. i know we lost a lot of days and the time, we're coming up on 6:00 because we have the flashing 12's. we have been without power sense friday. we have more on what we're doing to get the power back on and what you ned to to know to stay safe and sound.

it's like christmas in towson. when folks can expect their power back on. you know scammers will come out of the woods to make you fall for this fast one. if you need to chop your tree down, joce sterman has the latest advice on who you can trust. >> we are sweating this thing out with you. >> tonight we are still under a state of emergency. everybody is talking about the power outages. bge crews and crews from out of state are working to get power back on to you. we are talking 200,000 homes. ballet baltimore and baltimore county have a lot of outages. we are under 40,000. 14 howard county schools will be shut down because they don't have