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Northeast Massachusetts Get Hit by Snowstorm; Interview with Boston Police Commissioner; Stock Market Down; Biggest Snowstorm in Boston

Aired January 27, 2015 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me this hour.

In the northeast, New Yorkers are grumbling and New Englanders are shoveling. This is a live image from Boston. Winter hardy souls there and specifically on Cape Cod, they're taking the brunt of the storm. With up to two feet of snow expected, this will likely go down as one of the top five storms in Massachusetts state history.

Watch the snow pile up on New York's Long Island. This is time lapse video from a CNN iReporter. It's truly mesmerizing to watch, but not so much fun to watch when it's outside your own window.

Here are the latest snowfall totals. As we've said, the heaviest snowfalls from New York's southern suburbs and up the coast. Today, many New Yorkers are angry saying emergency officials overreacted by shutting down roads and public transportation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: We'll be redeploying much of the equipment from the New York City area, mid-Hudson area, to Long Island and specifically to Suffolk.

... officials overreacted by shutting down roads and public transportation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, (D) NEW YORK: We'll be redeploying much of the equipment from the New York City area, mid-Hudson area, to Long Island and specifically to Suffolk. We're lifting all of the traffic bans on the road at 8:00, north of Suffolk, the New York City, Worchester, Rockland, in the 13 county area that was affected will all be lifted at 8:00. COSTELLO: CNN crews are fanned out across the northeast as the storm churns its way up the coast and dumps even more snow along the way. So, let's head to a state really getting slammed. That would be Massachusetts. Jennifer Gray is in Boston this morning. Good morning, Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, good morning, Carol. Welcome to Boston. It's a mess out here. We are looking at winds gusting anywhere from 20 to 30 miles per hour. I think I just choked on a snowflake. We're seeing the snow continue to come down very heavily. And it's been coming down at the rate of two inches per hour for most of the morning. We're looking at it continuing to stack up and it is thick. We're looking at this powdery snow continue to pile. My weather station right here has been keeping tabs on the wind condition here. And we have seen winds pick up to 25 miles per hour to 30 or so. And the plows have even been coming by and you can see the mounds of snow that are now being piled up and this is what the streets of Boston will look like with all of these snow mounds just on this side.

That travel ban went into effect at midnight last night. It's still in effect. And people have been taking it seriously. They have to get plows out here so they can clear the roads. They towed actually about 130 cars last night that didn't get out of the way. And we also know that about 150 people statewide are in shelters.

Boston is protected by the harbor. That's good news. That's why we haven't seen a lot of that coastal flooding like -- look at the wind gusts -- like we've been talking about. But places to the north and to the south have been dealing with some serious coastal flooding. They'll also be dealing with beach erosion as well. We've also been talking about Nantucket's problem with that coastal flooding as well as the power outages. They have one of the highest wind gusts of this entire storm at about 78 miles per hour. That's what caused them to lose power. We've been dealing with winds not quite that strong, and so it's been that delicate balance. The snow is so powdery, that it will just fly off the power lines. So, it hasn't been accumulating, which is the good news. That's why most of Boston still has power. I think about five percent or less does not have power at the moment.

But Carol, this is still going to be continuing for a good 12 hours at least and so we could easily pick up another foot. The forecast is saying 8 to 12 inches. So, that's what we're going to be counting on as we go through the next couple of hours, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Thank you very much, Jennifer Gray. Hopefully you can get somewhere warm to chill out for a second and you won't choke on anymore snowflakes. Thank you so much.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: Massive storms like this one are a challenge for law enforcement in every city and in Boston this storm could be a record breaker. Joining me now by the phone is the Boston police commissioner, Bill Evans. Good morning, sir.

BILL EVANS, BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: Good morning, sir. COSTELLO: Good morning, so how are things going?

EVANS: Quite a bit of snow, obviously, here in Boston and, you know, but things are going well. You know, I know the mayor encouraged along with the governor for people to stay off the roads and the plows are doing a good job and, you know, the roads are passable for emergency equipment and our officers have been out there all morning long.

COSTELLO: I can't imagine how cold that work must be for them. You're not messing around when it comes to this travel ban. If people don't follow the travel ban, have you issued many tickets?

EVANS: No. Again, you know, we've been asking people to kindly get off the road. But we're not into, you know, obviously causing them to get fines. But, you know, for the most part, most of the people we see out have legitimate purpose. You know, most of them medical personnel, hospital personnel and honestly we've been shadowing the nurses, the doctors and all personnel to the hospital. I think we made half a dozen trips myself down to the Mass General, to the Brigham and Women's Hospital, so we've been busy making sure, you know, all emergency personnel across the city get in because that's who we rely on in terrible times like this.

COSTELLO: What has been here your biggest challenge?

EVANS: Well, I think our biggest challenge is just making sure, you know, we get everyone to stay off the roads. We get the cars off the emergency arteries and let the plows do their work. And the sooner they can get out there unimpeded, the more people can get back and we'll get the city hopefully back to normal tomorrow, but, you know, this is an awful lot of snow. But I have got to thank the citizens of Boston. For the most part everyone is doing what the mayor asked and that's stay in and let emergency personnel do their work on the streets of the city.

COSTELLO: Well, good for them. Commissioner Evans, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

EVANS: All right. Thank you.

COSTELLO: You are welcome. CNN's Cristina Alesci is on Long Island where there's more than a foot of snow already and more is expected. So, they're suffering along with Bostonians this morning and others in Massachusetts. Good morning, Cristina.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Definitely a foot. I'm standing in at least a foot at this point. But this - the wind is just whipping the snow around in certain parts. If you look right back here, the snow has got to be at least 20 inches, if not more. And that's because of snow drifts.

You know, Carol, that travel ban as we've been talking about, all morning has in fact been lifted, but it is still very dangerous to drive because not all of the roads actually have been plowed. Actually, we've been hearing from the locals here at the hotel that we're staying in that the main road inside of town is still not clear. So, despite what you're hearing from officials, you have to be careful and it's also even if you're not driving, it's still dangerous to go outside. There have been two blizzard related deaths here in Suffolk County and that's not all. This area specifically is going to continue to be hit by snow. You know, when I was out here at 5:30 this morning -- I keep slipping because it is just so uneven. When I was out here at 5:30 this morning I could stand perfectly fine. Now it's hard to walk around. Actually county officials are telling people not to go out and shovel because of the precise issue that I'm having here right now. You are really unstable.

The other big issue out here as we discussed last time is beach erosion. As you can see the ocean is churning up and what you're seeing here right now is not high tide yet, but it will be in a few hours. The beach erosion is a factor of two things really. How high the tide goes and how far out the waves break.

Now that the waves are breaking closer to the shore, local officials and local businesses are worried about beach erosion. In fact, if you see that shack down there that was completely taken in by the ocean during Superstorm Sandy. The hotel had to rebuild that and just a few miles up the road in the center of town they've got bigger problems with beach erosion. So, they are going to be really concerned about that. Local businesses really, really rely on the beauty of the beaches out here to bring in tourists from around the state and around the world.

I cannot tell you, I come to Montauk to vacation this summer, how many more tourists are coming out here year after year for the beaches, Carol. So, that is a significant area of concern.

Also, power here. The wind keeps whipping up. And we know anything above 30 miles an hour will become an issue for power lines. We already got numbers from the power authority that 122 people are without power. Superstorm Sandy, of course, took out a lot of power for a lot of these residents and businesses. So, we're continuing to monitor the situation here. There's a lot more snow to come. A lot more wind to come. So, everybody should just stay inside at this point. Carol.

COSTELLO: I know I see that poor guy shoveling snow behind you. I feel for him. And for you too. Cristina Alesci, thanks so much.

All right. We've been keeping an eye on the stock market and it ain't looking good. So, let's go to Maribel Aber to find out why. Hi.

MARIBEL ABER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Carol. Well, the Dow down about looks like as of now 296 points. And it's all really about two things. We're talking about we got a weak report on durable goods orders that came in low. Durable goods is what companies are doing, are they buying more things? Are they buying manufacturing? Apparently, they're not. And we talked about gas prices and oil prices plunging, the big companies not buying the oil and energy companies. So we're seeing that also in earnings. We're seeing that in caterpillar, caterpillar, which makes this manufacturing equipment down 7.2 percent after, you know, it forecast its results were plunging because of less people, less companies purchasing.

COSTELLO: OK. So, over the long haul, though, because I would like to look at the big picture and not center on just one little aspect of the day, so put this in perspective for us.

ABER: So, to put it in perspective, I mean right now this is - we want to see if this is going to be a trend. I mean we've been watching oil prices, we are seeing what's going on in Saudi Arabia. What's going to happen? What's the fallout from that? The second thing, the separate piece is home prices. Home price is another big thing. We've seen home prices slow in the year end of November and, but even though we have got these nice mortgage rates are happening right now, so when you put those two pieces together it looks like we're going this way but we're going to have to watch for that trend, Carol, and we're just starting off in earning season. We want to see what these other companies report.

But something like Microsoft, which also reported lower. Not a great first sign.

COSTELLO: Maribel Aber, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: For millions of New Yorkers, the worst is over. The blizzard delivered only a glancing blow to the city and this morning the streets are slowly reopening. Public transportation is roaring back to life. But to the north, boy, is that whole different story. Let's check in with CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. They are still getting slammed in Boston.

CHAD MYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Still getting slammed. And they will for the next probably I think four or five hours. Still a lot of snow coming in and we didn't get a lot of snow here. Seven to ten inches in the city. And that's a miss. Any place else, Atlanta, that's shut down. So, this gives you an idea of the hardiness of the people that are here. Here is more snow, though, coming in down the Hudson Valley from almost about Saratoga, Rutland down to New York. So they will get another - maybe another inch here in New York City. But it's the big story, the Boston snow that's still to come.

The onshore flow bringing in the snow. The onshore flow wasn't strong enough yesterday to push the snow as far west as New York City. That's why it didn't get the snow here and that's why this is the good news story that people go out and play in it right now rather than go out and shovel in it. Because this storm at 11 inches is manageable for the city. You double that number and all of a sudden it takes three times as long to move that much snow. Here's your windchill factors. Be careful outside. Make sure the pets are inside at this point in time.

2 below zero here in Springfield. 1 below in Boston. And 9 below the windchills because of the winds, at 45 miles per hour, Nantucket, just had a gust of 64 miles per hour.

COSTELLO: And they don't have power.

MYERS: And they don't have power. And it's the windchill there is 10. The wind blowing through the house. I know the wind doesn't feel - the windchill factor doesn't get into the house but it can blow through the cracks in the house and all of a sudden inside gets as cold as the outside. Nantucket, the high gust was 78 miles per hour.

COSTELLO: That would just be scary, right? So should we expect more of this this winter? These extreme weather events that we're experiencing?

MYERS: We had the clipper that came through on Sunday into Monday and that got us the cold air that this storm was able to use, so we're into it now. I don't know why the model did so badly for this storm. The GFS, we talk about the new model, the new - model, it did great. But the old model, that's the old faithful that's always done well, just did really poorly. And I don't know why yet. Maybe because it's later in the season. The Gulfstream is colder. It didn't have the energy. You know, the models aren't updated every day. They only have a couple of different equations for different seasons. So we're later in the season. Maybe we are later in the model, we are later in the temperatures offshore. We'll have to figure that out. But now we have a new model that did really good. We just didn't trust it yesterday. Now we will.

COSTELLO: Now you will. Right. Chad Myers, thanks so much.

MYERS: You are welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the "NEWSROOM," this city that never sleeps shut down because of a blizzard, but did the city go overboard? We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: Transportation, trains, planes, and automobiles brought to a screeching halt. Frozen in place you might say. More than 7,500 flights canceled just today. That's according to flightaware.com. Hundreds more are already scrubbed for tomorrow. Amtrak suspending service north of New York with reduced service south of the city. Public transportation in New York up and running again after being shutdown overnight because of the snow for the first time in more than a century.

New York and New Jersey lifting statewide travel bans this morning, though. The travel bans do remain in effect for other parts of the region including hard hit Massachusetts and Connecticut.

So plan for the worst, hope for the best. Probably the mindset of the New York City Mayor bill De Blasio amid forecasts of a devastating snowstorm. And when my colleague Chris Cuomo asked de Blasio if officials might have overreacted, here's what the mayor said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Of all of the criticism that you get as mayor of a big city like this, people today will be saying, you scared me for nothing. Look, I could have gone to work. I could have done all these things. What's your message?

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D) NEW YORK: Better safe than sorry. We had a consensus from the meteorologists across the board that this thing was going to be easily two feet. That's what we were hearing until late into yesterday. It was still being projected to be close to two feet. Two feet of snow would have paralyzed this city. So, we did what was necessary to keep people safe. And by the way, by getting everyone off the road, the sanitation department could get out there and clear the way so now we'll get back to normal much more quickly. The same with the state. By closing those roads, by holding back the subways so they would be safe, now look at the lines up and running quickly. This is a better safe than sorry scenario. And if it had been what it was projected to be, you and I wouldn't necessarily be standing here right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And that's a true story. So, let's head out to Deborah Feyerick, she's been driving around New York City all night long. So, Deborah, I must say that politicians, you know, it's a tough decision. Because if they make mistakes, the media, including me, would have come down hard on Mayor De Blasio and said why weren't you more prepared? Why didn't you take every precaution? So, you can't have it both ways, right?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, and you're darned if you do and you're darned if you don't. If you don't call off school, then people criticize you for calling off school. If you do, people say why did you? So, it's just a may not - I spoke to police officer. We moved from Manhattan to Long Island. I spoke with a police officer who said any profession today where you can actually stay in bed is a very good profession for you, for me, for the police officers, the sanitation workers in various areas. Everybody has been largely prepared. And we want to show you a view out of our window. This is Long Island. This is Suffolk County. They indeed are getting hit. You can see, it is effectively deserted. It's deserted. People, you know, we've seen a couple of folks who are digging out. We've seen a couple of plows.

One of the strategies, which was a strategy that the New York City mayor incorporated, was getting people off the streets. This was strategic in an attempt to basically make sure that all the main avenues, all of the thoroughfares were cleared and cleared quickly. Any time a plow or a snow, you know, or this snow machines have to stop and go around a vehicle slows the process down. And they wanted to make sure especially in New York City that things were up and running more quickly than they would otherwise have been. But here on Long Island, it's 20 after 10. And you can see it is so quiet. People haven't even started to dig their cars out because frankly, you just are going to have to do it all over again.

So the decision they made out here in Suffolk County was the right one. They have lifted the travel ban here, but really, nobody is driving. It's still dangerous. It's still slippery, it's still slick. And even though the main roads have been done, the side ones haven't.

So, as you say, Carol, you know, it's one of those situations where people will criticize no matter what you do so you might as well sit back and enjoy it and at least if you don't have to go to work or you have got the day off from school, enjoy it. Carol?

COSTELLO: Good advice, Deborah Feyerick. Many thanks to you.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM," the winds howl and Bostonians chuckle. Check out this road sign posted on Twitter. Warning of the sounds. I know that was terrible. But you get my drift - It captures not only the Boston accent, but the attitude. The latest from Boston just ahead.

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COSTELLO: Good morning. Thank you so much for joining me. I'll Carol Costello. Officials are lifting the travel bans in New York and New Jersey and as you can see, roads are also reopening in parts of Connecticut. But driving can still be treacherous as this storm churns up the coast. Here are the latest snowfall totals. New York City received just a fraction of the 20 inches, first predicted but as you head north from the city the numbers climb and speaking of numbers, airlines have canceled about 7,000 flights since yesterday. Here are some of the stranded travelers at New York's JFK Airport trying to, you know, steal a few hours of sleep on a very hard chair.

This hour, Boston is still in the teeth of the storm. This could be one of the heaviest snowfalls in the state of Massachusetts history. Let's head to Boston and Brooke Baldwin.

Good morning, Brooke.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning. It's unreal. The snow amount I'm looking at now as I carefully trudge my way toward the camera. I was out here until 1:00 in the morning where it was up right around my ankles. And so, clearly it is quite - quite a bit thicker. Around the city of Boston here, we're hearing something like 14.5 inches thus far. But as you can see, the snow is coming and should continue to do so for a little while.