it's not coming over the banks just yet. >> that's our affiliate wabc. let's check in with our own jacqui jeras. >> we have a big burst of thunderstorms that are going to be heading into new york city here, anderson very shortly. it looked okay where you are right now but it is coming, minutes away, heavy downpours as well as very strong winds. we could see 60 mile per hour gusts easy as it starts to push into your area. it's moving up towards the upper bay, maybe 10, 15 minutes at the most from lower manhattan. this is moving up towards the north from the south. this could be the back side of that storm coming in. we've been seeing easterly wind, easterly wind, things will start shifting and we'll start to see that pull in from the west. it looks like we're getting the back side or second burst and second wave as the storm structure continues to kind of change and evolve as we speak. so conditions will be getting worse once again in new york city. also the other thing to keep in mind is that that storm surge is still very high right now. this is the wor

let's check in with our affiliate, wabc, and see the monitoring of their coverage. >> reporter: it has not made its way across on the main roadway. not a lot of residences here, just the fishing pier. in good shape so far and it won't get any worst than this. rough waves out there making their way towards us slowly, but not too bad here. things are quieting down from the last time i talked to you last, and it's not quite so bad and hopefully will give us a little break for a little while. >> we're here with bill evans. will it stay calm? >> she still has to go through one more batch. >> let's check on our soledad o'brien. she was in the meat backing area earlier. >> reporter: we're along the west side highway, so we're downtown in what is known as the meat packing district. and take a look here, some folks made the mistake of driving through what they thought was clear and open paying the price for it. their vehicles stucked and they are waiting to see how they will move the vehicles out. right across the way is the hudson river. and that's a problem because the hudson crested its bank

in for sam champion is amy freeze from the new york station wabc.forget the leg warmers, let's bring on the leotard. the crowd is comfortable here. in the midwest it's the countdown to the cooldown. we'll start with our affiliate wls in chicago from the willis tower looking at the trump, the cubs national game, you canceled/postponed because of storms that came through. all this big refreshing air mass that's going to invade the country. minneapolis is already feeling it. 70, room temperature. chicago, you will slip into the upper 70s by thursday. 81 in new york city by thursday, you can see the transition over the next several days of cooler air. over to the west coast. it's 10 degrees below the average in los angeles again. ft. collins, 92, storms on the eastern plains. hot through the central u.s. and severe storm watches for the tennessee river valley. it's going to be a beautiful day in parts of the east coast but not boston. they'll have some storms there today with temperatures in the upper 80s and low 90s. >> if you're coming to times square

with our biggest problem which is we've been spending entirely too much. >> all right, lucy yang from wabce in new york, we were joking earlier if neither side is happy that's probably the hallmark of a good compromise. the republicans are upset about possible cuts to defense, democrats upset about possible cuts to medicare. some democrats upset too no tax increases were part of this, no revenue generation part of the final deal. but ultimately had to abandon because of political reality. >> none of this is a done deal yet even though foreign marks are rallying and everyone seems to believe what the president said, that this will go through. >> congress still has to vote, plus those important credit ratings are still not done yet. damage may already be done. if we get downgraded from aaa to aa the economic ripple effect of this is not settled just yet. so we'll see. >> it's not likely to be pretty. >> no, ain't over, as they say. >> that's right. >>> wall street is likely to bounce back big now that the debt crisis appears to be for the most part over. worried investors helped drive the ma

and amy freeze, from our new york station wabc, is in for sam. good morning, amy. >> good morning, you guys. as we get started, it's so hot across much of the country. we have 13 states that will be under warnings and advisories for heat today. triple-digits for much of the country. dallas, 37 days straight and counting, looks like they will tie that at least on triple-digit heat. for severe weather for the midwest but today that area of red is going to extend through the ohio, tennessee river valleys, producing severe weather in those areas. while it's heat for much of the country, there's one place that's cool. that's on the east coast where it will be about ten degrees below their average highs this afternoon. >> coming up a little later this morning, big storms rolling through kansas city yesterday. we'll find out who played better in serious wetter, was it the tigers or the royals? >> welcome. >> that's a tease. >>> we have brand-new details this morning on the deadly polar bear attack on a group of arctic explorers. one 17-year-old boy was

let's go to that live aerial shot from wabc, the chopper re covering this story very aggressively. as you can see the water from the passaic river bleeding into this neighborhood where there's about 500 houses, we're out here yesterday talking to people as they packed up and left and said they've seen flooding before but never anything like this. as you said, robin, there is flooding all over this state this morning. i want to show you an incredible picture from the town of manville which is about 50 miles away if here. look at these national guard trucks trying to drive through very, very deep water. all you can see is the rooftops of the vehicle. incredible shots from there. one last note, they have set up a shelter for the 500 families to ride out these anxious hours. this morning, the questions when will the water go down and when can they get back into their homes and how bad will the damage be? >> our thanks to you, dan. i got to tell you we're thinking of the people there and our local stations all up and down the east coast, terrific job in covering this. people are still a

get an idea of how strong those winds were earlier this morning, cbs's christine sloan -- >> now to wabcut of new york was well. >> one family, six people, they had enough. they said, you know what? we need to get out of here. they called for help. the fire department showed up, took them three trips to get the six occupants out. they had two elderly people there. a couple of young girls. two adults. they were brought to safety. then there were a number of trips after that as residents -- they've been through floods before. so they thought they could make it through. there was a little discrepancy there. the fire chief says they were given notice to leave. residents say they didn't. a lot of residents said we've seen flooding before. we're going to stay. and it was even too much for them. they'd been through these floods and couldn't hang in there. they needed to be rescued. you know, once the water comes in, even if the basement is empty and they've got the house up on stilts, you've got to cut the power once it starts to come up to the first floor. that's when they knew they were going

, we didn't have the sprawling subway system, which tonight is in grave danger, as tim fleisher of wabcplains. >> salt water is especially corrosive. it causes many other problems, as they try to put the world's largest transit system back online after the hurricane. >> reporter: one more note on the skyscrapers. the national weather system, put out an alert. they're seeing increasing wind speeds at higher elevations. not promising. >> a particular concern for that stress test you know is coming. dan, thank you. >>> when we come back, the other danger this evening. the giant part of this country that's going to be on the wrong side of this hurricane, as it hits overnight. we'll go back to the map to hits overnight. we'll go back to the map to explain why.day h less chronic low back pain. imagine living your life with less chronic osteoarthritis pain. imagine you, with less pain. cymbalta can help. cymbalta is a non-narcotic treatment that's fda-approved to manage chronic musculoskeletal pain. one pill a day, every day, can help reduce this pain. tell your doctor right away if your mood

department says they brought in roughly 1,000 people, some of the rescues captured live on local station wabc's chopper cam. have you ever seen it this bad? >> never. >> reporter: we gave a small camera to the rescue crews, who gave us a close-up view of how high the waters are. three days after irene, the flood waters are still wreaking havoc throughout the northeast. snarling railroad lines, washing out highways and cutting off entire communities. today in vermont, the national guard was out delivering food and supplies to the stranded. tonight, there are still 3.3 million people from maine to north carolina who don't have their power back. the head of fema, along with the homeland security secretary today, toured the damage in vermont, virginia and north carolina. back here in patterson today, while we did see frustration, sadness and anger, we also saw the better angels of our nature on full display. a grandson's kindness and a little boy's resilience. so, how were the fire crews who picked you up from your house, were they nice? >> yeah, really nice. i want to be just like them. >> reporte

our coverage continues now with wabc's m.j.porter: on the long beach board walk, no one said a word. they just watched the pounding surf and worried. >> spent all day, battening down the hatches. we duct taped our windows. weot sandbags. we're doing everything we can to prevent, you know, a total loss. >> reporter: when the storm crashes across the beach, coastal communities will flood. many more will lose electricity. perhaps for several days. evacuations are already under way on fire island. they could be mandatory. in nassau county, the county executive held a tense meeting with his emergency management team, amid serious concerns about flooding. their own internal inundation maps show the effects in red of a category 1 storm, with major floodingngcross the barrier island communities and along the mainland. most people we spoke with were beginning to get the message. >> you can really feel it. you can sense something is -- something big is coming along. >> reporter: of course, it all depends on the ultimate track of the stor

amy freeze is in for our sam champion from wabc. >> here's amy.ey're in the northern part. i grew up down south. almost 400 reports of severe weather yesterday. check out the hail for parts of nebraska. it was bouncing and golf ball-size hail reported on the eastern plains of colorado, as well, where the temperatures dropped 50 degrees behind that hail. severe weather is expected today again through the central plains. but it's just a little further to the east so expecting storms from oklahoma city into the central part of the tennesse river valley. plin and little rock, tupelo included in that. cool marine air mass is still over the west coast. so, 60s and 70s expected. los angeles, 73 today. keep those 70s heading into the weekend. so, it is about ten degrees low average for that a that's the forecast. and "jersey shore" representing out here today, lara. back inside to you. >> all right. good to know. thank you. >>> here's a look at what's coming up on the "gma" morning menu. they were once the hottest child stars in hollywood. where are they

wabc reports from long island. >> reporter: the generator at lisa's massapequa park home is for the necessities running her refrigerator, so her family has to grin and bear it on the luxuries. >> just right now i need some light. >> reporter: sunday night they reported 4500 out of 6,000 customers, like lisa, are without power here in massapequa park. she's relying on candles and flashlights to get around, and dreading that cold shower in the morning before work. >> the tree came down from across the street, took the power down. we've been without power for a while. it's warm. it's beaiful out here. and the storm is over. but we've had enough. we need power. where is lipa? we haven't seen one lipa truck. where are they? >> reporter: so many people here on long island dealing with one of three things -- flooding, lack of electricity or storm damage. just one of those three things can be so frustrating. put all three together, and it's devastating. reporting at massapequa park, long island, abc news. >> biggest power outage in long island in 20 years. >> that's right. of course, affecting transit

but there's bad news, which as you can see from this live aerial shot from wabc, our powerhouse local station. the bad news is there's still a huge mess out here. you're looking live at flooding in downtown paterson, new jersey, from the passaic river. the water has steadily gone down. it's still an open question as to when all the evacuees from here can finally go home. overnight, in the town of wallington, new jersey, a mandatory evacuation in some neighborhoods, as the passaic river crested at a record high. with people forced into shelters with their children and their pets. have any of you here ever seen the flooding get this bad? >> no. >> no. >> not in my lifetime. >> not in any part of the county. >> it's in the water. >> reporter: upriver in the city of paterson, firefighters were responding to a report of people stranded. >> stay out of the water. it's no good. >> reporter: we gave them a small camera and they captured these images in the heart of the flood zone, where street signs and school buses were submerged. and while that initial distress call didn't pan out, they did

passaic river, little falls, new jersey, aerials hopefully from wabc.r standing in it right there. again, the river expected to crest this morning and slowly begin to recede as we go on through time. there you see little falls, that entire neighborhood. flooded. let's look at this satellite picture. it shows you a high resolution visible satellite imagery of irene as it was making landfall in new york city. you can see the eye. what the visible satellite does, shows you the density of the cloud tops. the northern part of the storm it looks bright. that's really, really thick clouds. lot of moisture. southern half, not quite as bright. not as much moisture. that's where all the rain was, where all the flooding was, where the torrential stuff was and we're seeing it right now. let's talk about what the folks across the u.s. have to deal with today. dry weather again today. we had rough weather across north carolina. not so much today. should be dry. just about everybody on the east coast. the east coast still has to worry about the atlantic basin. we have

according to wabc new york, everyone got out of that house safely.lem yesterday because the front wall of the house collapsed and ruptured a gas main. the wall flew across the yard in the explosion. the owner reported the gas leak yesterday. governor chris christie had expressed particular concern about flooding in this town. boy, was he right. that house is going to burn to the ground because emergency crews just can't get to it. >>> along the east coast, deserted all weekend. there were no flights coming or going. good news to report this morning. arrivals and departures are under way at laguardia airport. arrivals at jfk and newark are also under way. departures are not expected to start until noon. more than 11,000 flights were canceled over the weekend. >> new york city's subway system is back up and running, service slowly resuming. it was shut down for the first time ever because of a natural disaster. commuters -- >> look at that. >> wow! >> empty, empty. you know your pockets are not going to get picked. longer wait time and longer lines. >>

we think this area will flood and this is elms ford new york, the name of the town, pictures from wabc, and the abc flagship station in new york and our network news affiliate and, if everybody would evacuate they wouldn't have had to do these rescues. >> rick: category-2, category 1 and people think it will not be as bad. >> it seems to me. i don't know your thoughts but it seems category 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, can be as deceptive as it can be helpful. it was worse than a category-1 storm because of the surge and other factors. >> rick: in our minds as humans we thing of these things in an orderly fashion and storms aren't orderly and they are all different and you have to pay attention to the broader context we try to give you. >> give us a little more. >> rick: another storm. jose. >> a new tropical storm. >> rick: out here, jose, you'll hear the name and think, oh, no. this is another one, don't be worried. it will continue a day or so, to the west of bermuda and crews are going to bermuda and you might have a problem but nothing that will cause significant issues. however that said, shep,

we are now going to go to lee goldberg the wabc -- we are going to go to, sorry, new jersey governor chris christie. we are going to go to governor christie right now. as we have been telling you, new jersey is getting hit hard from the storm. chris christie is monitoring the situation from the regional operations intelligence center in ewing, new jersey. he joins us right now. governor christie, thanks for coming on the show. >> thanks for having me, jake. >> the hurricane made landfall in new jersey shortly before 6:00 this morning. your state's just beginning to weather the storm. what are the early reports telling you? >> earlier reports are very difficult, jake, we have over half a million now without power. we have 15,000 people in 45 shelters across the state. 250 roads are closed, and we are going to look at a record flooding situation here, both at the shore and inland, so my message to the people of new jersey, the eye of the storm is still over the state. we are far from out of the woods on the storm itself and i urge people to stay inside their homes. one report we have t

our affiliate, wabc reporting that 40,000 homes and businesses are already without power. last night, the new york city mayor, michael bloomberg came out again and said, new yorkers, i know you're a tough bunch, but this is not the time to be complacent. >> the bottom line is the storm is finally hitting new york city. the winds will increase. the rain will increase and the tidal surge will increase, particularly in the morning. tomorrow morning when you wake up, whatever the conditions are, please stay inside. too many things blow around, whether it's tree limbs coming down or porch furniture being blown away. it's just not safe to be outside. it's cute to say i was outside during the storm but you're much better off staying inside and looking out. >> interesting how he put that. it's cute to say you're outside and to be there and you made it through a storm but this is not funny stuff anymore. the time for evacuation is done, stay inside. also this has proven to be a deadly storm already. irene made landfall yesterday, about 8:00 in the morning eastern time and since the

our wabc chopper up over pompton lakes, new jersey, entire neighbors are under water. this house is on fire. they're having great difficulty because it's surrounded by flood waters to get to it. massive flooding is such a huge concern all over to northeast. and so many towns, these flash floods have raged after the storm. >> you see it right there. the winds weren't as bad as people feared. this was such a big storm and it dumped so much water on places that have already been saturated by water this summer. almost 5 million people lost power. it could take into the weekend to restore it in many places. there are at least 22 deaths being blamed on the storm. up to $7 billion in damage. this is the tenth weather disaster this year that has topped more than $1 billion in damage. a difficult rush hour in the northeast, especially in new york and philadelphia. but the subways and the buses are starting to run now. we hope to be back to normal pretty soon. >> also, perhaps getting back to normal a bit of good news for people trying to get home. airports all over to northeast

on local station wabc's chopper cam. have you ever seen it this bad?we gave a small camera to the rescue crews who gave us a close-up view to how high the waters are. floodwaters are still wreaking havoc throughout the northeast. snarling railroad lines. washing out highways. cutting off entire communities. there are still 3.3 million people from maine to north carolina who don't have their power back. back here in paterson, we did see frustration, sadness and anger, we saw also the better angels of our nature on full display. a grandson's kindness. and a little boy's resilience. how were the fire crews who picked you up from your house? were they nice? >> they were really nice. i want to be just like them. >> reporter: amtrak announcing as of wednesday morning it will be resuming its train service between boston and philadelphia. this has been a massive service outage inconveniencing tens of thousands of people. so this at least is one bit of good news. dan harris, abc news, paterson, new jersey. >> 3 million people still without power. several days l

wabc's jeff begays looks at the fear and its impact. >> harlem is the soul of new >> reporter: vondacareer literally from the ground up. >> these are your t-shirts? >> reporter: she's selling t-shirts on a harlem sidewalk. >> how much do they sell for? >> $12. >> reporter: a year and a half ago she worked for a company in advertising until she lost her job. what do you think about this economy? >> i don't think it's going to get better any time soon. >> reporter: investors aren't optimistic about the economy either. when the closing bell rang, the market had lost more than 500 points. capping a miserable stretch. and with the u.s. government poised to release unemployment numbers, the drumbeat of bad news is expected to continue. >> i don't think there's any good news. you've got to give me a reason to buy stocks. >> reporter: vonda jamieson remains optimistic about her new career. >> this is what i do to make ends meet. >> reporter: she's been able to pay her bills with a t-shirt business that now has her focused on more than just dollars and cents. >> everybody wants to do their ow

so, sergeant, as we are getting this feed in from wabc, can you tell us who is all involved in the searchrescue missions and exactly what they are doing? >> good morning. patterson fire department in coordination with the police department and office of emergency management, we are dealing with quite a few resc s rescues. over 500 people rescued by boat and pretty much approaching that has been safe in a shelter in a community college which is now nearing its capacity. >> what type of people have you been rescuing, sergeant? families, kids, elderly? actually, we are looking at a shot now of one of the rescue workers holding what looks like a brand-new baby with the rest of the family here and none of the boats. describe to us. is this mainly what you are dealing with is family that are trapped? >> we are dealing with elderly people, families, small children, and pets as well along the flood-prone aers of the passaic river. it's been pretty much 24 hours a day. people call and we dispatch the fire department and they get out there with the boats and rescued people from the river who have j