hour of being a hurricane force wind. winds will be slow to diminish. wind gusts will go about 30 miles per hour until about midnight. snow showers tonight. breezy and chilly tomorrow and sunday. we'll show you doppler, full of snow showers potential of another form next week. the weather posed new challenges for area schools. with winds predicted to gust up to 60 miles per hour fairfax county school official printed the use of 600 classroom trailers. they were worried something know blow off the temporary shurz structures and hit some. so at annandale that meant moving 700 classes that usually use the trailers. >> we were able to present a spreadsheet within 20 minutes to advice the rest of the students where they were going to take classes. >> it's fun. i don't have to walk outside an be cold. it's fun bing side.

we're in the library now. >> reporter: annandale high added the trailers because of an explosion in its population. most local school systems are getting together their plans to make up days lost to snowstorms. alexandria and d.c. updated theirs. you can see them on wusa9.com. just click on 9 news extras. the worst of that storm missed us but folks to the north are not quite so lucky. terrell brown is in new york city with the latest. it's finally you and not us, terrell >> reporter: sort of. we have paid our dues, you've paid your dues. at this point it looks like the worst of the storm is over but the damage, derek, has already been done. we're talking about travel nearly impossible. it's been miserable all day long and nearly a million customers are without power in new york and across the region.

this storm isn't totally over just yet. an army of shovels and a fleet of plows are attacking the snow. it's a losing battle. >> the boss cleaned it twice last night. the guys did it twice today and i'm going to now. >> reporter: the storm is sitting over the northeast and could dumb up up to 30 inches in some places. the new york suburb of mt. pleasant has been anything but. >> the heavy wet snow created havoc in our community. >> reporter: the downed power lines and more than a million are powerless. the storm is crippling every form of transportation. hundreds of flights in the northeast are cancelled causing problems around the nation. many trains have seen significant delays and snow has stopped some in their tracks. >> we missed five trains. they were delayed. >> reporter: on the roads snow and ice are making it hard to get traction.

>> it's brutal. i got stuck. >> some sections of highway in new jersey and pennsylvania have been shut down. in new york city it's a tough time getting around not to mention a lot of the snow has turned into slush. so people are finding themselves tiptoeing just trying to make it threw the streets. but some welcome the snow. it shut down schools and this teenager is cashing in. >> i like it. i make a lot of money shoveling stuff. >> reporter: other kids enjoyed riding out the storm. >> i've been down the hill i don't know like 50 times. >> reporter: kids of all ages got creative trying to make the perfect snowman, no matter what size. >> it's not snowing right now derrick but 20 inches and counting in new york city and expected to go up. back to you guys. >> we know your pain, believe me. the weathering being blamed for a scaffolding collapse in northwest d.c. today and that's just one of the stories we have in the news right now.

also tonight, no decision. the jury in that deadly street racing case deliberates for five hours but they call it quits for the weekend. and fight to survive. a father and daughter are in critical condition after a fire at their apartment complex. i'm audrey barns at hyattsville. a fan and his daughter were critically injured in a fire at the toledo apartment complex. the little girl who lives in the apartment next door is like a granddaughter to her. all she can think about was how to get her out. >> i start hitting the door, calling the person that is in that room. and then nobody answer. i have to rush back to my own apartment to bring out my children. >> reporter: by this time fire crews were on the scene. >> i said in 203 there is a baby there with a father. >> reporter: firefighters pulled the little girl and her dad out of the

apartment. the 35-year-old man has third degree burns over 80% of her body. his daughter wasn't burned but the smoke had gotten to her. >> they were working codes when we left. they were doing cpr on both victims. a jury is close to deciding the fate of 20-year-old tavon taylor a accused of being the second driver in an illegal street race that killed eight people two years ago. taylor's defense attorney told jurors his client was a naive target of overzealous officers. he called the confession coerced, and argued that no evidence links taylor to the race or subsequent deaths. >> there was a lot of public opinion made about this case because the actual public never knew thees ofhen they did. >> reporter: prosecutors told the jury of seven women and six men that

surveillance video, eye witnesses, skidmark at the crashne taylor's own signed confession make him an accomplice in the gruesome deaths of eight people. i'm lindsay mastis northwest washington. two men arethey fall off scaffot the new safeway being built on wisconsin avenue. wind came through and that was it. >> reporter: a witness says the wind caused at least one one of the men to lose his footing and fall. >> the board moved enough that they went down. >> they were working about three sts feet pete piringer sas the men fell into a shallowhaow ditch. >> in the course of the fall they brought down with them some other construction materials and some debris. and they actually needed to be extricated. >> reporter: both men were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. a site supervisor says osha is now investigating the incident and has not yet determined the official

cause. work scheduled to start along route 50 there is a commuter alert you'll want to know about before you head out monday morning. crews start a long-term project along i 50 in arlington. at that point means the left lane between courthouse road and 10th street will be closed down. it's ought part of a utility relocation project and that line is expect to ta closed until july. speaking of, let's ge traffic center. it's friday night. >> i love it but but the situatn also improving on the north side of 495 as you can see traffic movinabou 10 minutes ag, blocked due to an accident on the outer loop. it's jammed all the way back to georgia from connecticut. improving as we speak so that is good news. let's het out to the map. a brand new accident at bran p avenue and moorz road. we understand three vehicles involved in the crash so expect delays going threw that area of

prince georges county. as we head back outside on i-95 we're seeing late volume building up between dale city and a triangle. expect to stay in your car 20 extra minutes going threw that area a. if you're hopping on the metro this weekend, tonight and this weekend expect 20 extra minute delay to your commute time due to maintenance work between strathmore and grossman. this is metro rail, metro bus and metro access. add 10 cents to your fare. 20,000 mayorers have served in iraq since 2001. governor o'malley is in baghdad visiting some of the maryland troops. he spoke to us earlier from iraq and showed us one of the comforts of home he brought to our serving men and women. >> it's not crab cakes but they travel better than crab cake. so these are governor's challenge coins with the

state seal on one side and star spangled banner on the other. i've been getting a few coins in return so there's been a lot of photos taken with our distinctive flag, the black and white and red and gold. >> reporter: governor o'malley is in iraq at the invi tangsd at the cost of the u.s. defense department. he's expected to return to maryland on sunday. still ahead, following the money. a look another one local project getting the report of the federal stimulus. a scam targeting local kids on a popular website. what your kids should know before accepting the next facebook friend request. all coming up.

back now with an update on that inmate mistakenly released from a baltimore prison. raymond taylor was arrested this morning in martinsburg, west virginia. he was hanging out at the home of a childhood friend. taylor is serving three life sentences for the attempted murders of his ex-girlfriend and her two children. montgomery school has been under attack by a predator who operates threw facebook but a similar assault could happen anywhere. it's a story you'll see only on 9. the imposter poses as a flow student and asks to be facebook friends. the trouble starts once an unsuspecting student accepts the online friendship. that is when the culprit uses their name and attaches it to pornographic photos. >> parents need to be more

alert. there were so many kids who had posted and replied. if their parents were friends they would have seen the same thing i did. which is inappropriate. >> reporter: 200 students who attended chevy chase high school were bee friended by this pornographer who used a name that was close to an actual student. parents are talking about how to keep their kids safe online at momslikeme.com. caught in the breeze. a look at why washington was feeling like the windy city today. we'll check in with topper to see what the weekend will look like across the area. stay with us. with fios you have instant access

to news, traffic and weather without changing the channel. i will be ready for whatever the day throws at me. uh, looks like torrential rain, bumper to bumper traffic and some kind of weird smell downtown. i will be working from home today. my sister's coming. i can make it. i'm sure she's lovely. [ male announcer ] instant weather and traffic without changing the channel and 2 times more very satisfied customers than cox. call the verizon center for customers with disabilities at 800-974-6006 tty/v.

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keeping it looking its best is up to tide. tide. style is an option. clean is not. back now with a tour of the water treatment plant in rockville. it is using almost $2 million in grants from the stimulus bill to make some energy efficient upgrades. >> we got tony vest in the

infrastructure in our community. if we're going to be able to continue to grow and deal with the environmental issues, we need to do a better job. >> reporter: 31 jobs were created by the project at the water treatment plant. senator card insays once the improvements are done rockville residents will save a total of between 50 and $75,000 a year in heating bills. power bills could be going down for some dominion power customers. a settlement with the virginia state corporation commission means a residential customer using 1,000 will kil owe watt hours of electricity would save about 10 bucks a month. customers are in line for a refund of $42 plus interest foorn interim rate hike that took effect in september. we checked in with dominion about outages and the numbers are not so bad as we feared. they are wshging on just 74 outages in northern virginia. pepco has 79. pge has 21 customers with no service and mecco has 2.

appalachian power reporting none. there is one of the days when sane people would stay inside of. wind gusts were up to 63 in frederick county, 55 at lowden and 53 at dulles so of course we sent our own bruce johnson out to get a sense of it. >> reporter: the boss wanted the windiest spotty could find. the roof top terrace of the w hotel. some of the best views in dc but freezing and a bit scary when the weather service issues a high-wind warning. thanks to the criterion create canyon effect it was even windier at street level. >> i think it's horrible. >> are you cold? very cold. >> reporter: weather geeks call it the bernuli principle. the wind starts moving faster threw the buildings. >> we love d.c.. we hate the wind but love d.c.. >> too cold. >> too cold. >> reporter: guesses on wind speed up to 50 miles per

hour but the gauge found nothing like that. >> 7, 6? it goes up to another least 8. >> reporter: the storm to the north is a bit like a giant low pressure hole in the atmosphere. the bigger the storm the lower the pressure the more the surrounding air rushes in to fill it. that's what's creating all the wind. it's a bit like water going threw a fun funnel. make a little hole at the bottom and up don't get much disturbance at the top. a big he -- bigger hole and the water zooms threw. at reagan national, the planes seemed to float inside ways. sustained wind speeds around noon ranged as high as 23 miles per hour. >> where is it? >> the plane looked cool when he got out of the car. >> is it too cold? >> si. >> a minute in the winter and

time to go home. at reagan national, bruce johnson, 9 news now. >> you saw the stand inside. >> i liked the funnel. >> did that work for you? >> a little bit of a stretch but it was pretty good. when you have winds like this go to pepco.com and click on the power cast. there is something that helps you if you are a pepco customer. let's go outside in the next three days. we're looking at maybe a flurry tomorrow. we're okay. why is that there i wonder? i know why. let's take a live shot outside. go to doppler for a second. i want to show these snow showers anyway. and notice up 270 they've been sitting there. it is accumulating so threes if you're out late tonight or even in the next couple hours be advised that there is a pretty good snow showers going on up there. we will zoom in a little bit and if you're up 270 it's almost in the district. we had a few flakes earlier

tonight. if you go up 270 on the west side of 270 and just on the eastern part of lowden county, pretty good activity, poolesville, seneca. just jump over the border, out toward reston, drainsville and great falls, pretty good snow showers. the blewer is the heavier snow -- bluer is the heavier snow. they're going to be around, the snow showers will be around for a while. probably for the next several hours. at least until midnight. let's go back to the computer. rockville has snow and olney as well. it will make it slippery. the computer. next three days look like this. we're looking at a flurry tomorrow and then 46 on sunday. nice on monday. very nice. only 50. that's pretty good. winds are gusting to 25 at national. they'll probably gust to about 30 for the next six hours or so. snow showers or flurry

possible tonight. 25 to 30. low temperatures. right now it's 34 in olney. windchills in the 20s though. maybe a left over flurry in the morning. 20s and 30s. by afternoon, a flurry possible but highs in the 40s. 40 to 45. satellite picture, radar combined. this next storm in california could be our next storm as we get into tuesday night and wednesday and it could be a coastal storm. in the meantime this massive storm is off long island and it's produced snow back to detroit and a cleveland and chicago. it will slowly move away over the weekend. next seven days. #4u tomorrow. maybe a flurry. 36 on sunday. nice on monday. 50. we'll watch the coastal storm. it will be possible. tuesday and wednesday would be the critical times. we're back in the 40s thursday and friday. >> i refuse to worry about that storm. i will go to the weird news file. when we think of birds making music it's about whistling or squawking but how about a screaming

guitar solo? in england they've hooked up electric guitars and the finches just sort of fly about. a bird lands on a guitar string and voila, music. sort of. it ain't hendricks. what do you want? just because they can sing doesn't mean they can play. we want to hear what you think. send your e-mails to mcginty's mailbag. mailbag@wusa9.com. 9 news now will be right back.

in the health care debate, when he was campaigning president obama promised change in washington. little did people know the change he meant was the government would be run without the input of the republicans or american people. seems president obama wants to run things his way even if it means shoving his health care reform down people's throats whether they like him or not. i seem to remember candidate obama promising to fix health care.

but the devil is in the details. harold has his own problems understanding the health care debate the always seem to hear from the democrats that the republicans are stonewalling and all we hear from the republicans at that points the democrats will not take their ideas seriouslism then we hear from the democrats and president they are going to push their plan regardless. then there was this from robin in alexandria who commented on yesterday's weird news about the nude church. i say rock on. the body is beautiful as long as we take care of ourselves. sadly because of the exploitation of nudity we're taught at an early age that nudity is disgusting and shameful. i must admit the first time i visited a nudist beach i was nervous but after a while, it seemed natural to be natural. there are any number of natural things that most of us would acknowledge we don't really need to see all the time. just saying. we do need to see your e-mails. the address, mailbag@wusa9.com. and before we go some

exciting news we want to share with you. starting monday, march 8, wusa 9 will offer you the first regularly scheduled 4:30 a.m. newscast. we recognize more and more viewers are getting up earlier and need up to the minute local news, weather and traffic. get it from andrea, howard and angie, 4:30 to 7:00. that is our report, i'll be back here tonight at 11:00 with anita brick man. wusa9.com is always on. see you later. bye-bye.

kirstie and jessica. new weight confessions. this is "entertainment tonight." a little hotness never hurt anyone. did it? >> all-new kirstie alley. how she plans to lose weight now. as "e.t." tracks her yo-yo diet road to fame. >> i obviously ate too much. plus, jessica simpson trying to gain weight? and new video. what happened when a "baywatch" babe slipped back into her bikini for "people" magazine. >> it's a great feeling. the trainer with the killer whale seconds before it turned deadly. the home video and hollywood speaks out. >> it's horrible that this person lost their life. absolutely horrible. plus, another seaworld attack caught on tape. and miraculous survival. "e.t.'s" countdown to oscar. >> i totally feel like it's hollywood prom. >> who still hasn't found the perfect gown with nine days to go. plus, new moms on emotional brink. >> kill the baby, it will get rid of the problem.