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Monster Blizzard Slams Northeast; Dow Plunges More Than 350 Points; President Obama Leaving Saudi Arabia; Remembering Auschwitz

Aired January 27, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now. A monster blizzard pounds the northeast just not exactly where some people thought.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: No kidding. From New York to Boston and beyond, we have the latest on what Mother Nature brought and where she's headed now.

BERMAN: Plus, what is going on with Wall Street? The Dow is down more than 360 points and falling. The warning signs you need to know about this morning.

BOLDUAN: Good very, very snowy morning from us in this nice, warm studio with images of snowy behind us.

I'm Kate Bolduan, everybody.

BERMAN: And I'm John Berman.

So the big, bad blizzard of 2015 is in fact both of those things, big and bad, in some places, just not exactly where everyone expected.

BOLDUAN: Right now at 11:00 Eastern, the storm and the story is in New England. A blizzard warning is in effect for parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Lots of snow on the ground, 25 inches in some places, and the big important thing to remember, it's still coming down. The story is not over. Wind gusts near hurricane force have knocked out power in places like Nantucket Island. There are travel bans, state emergencies and warnings about coastal flooding for millions of people.

BERMAN: Yeah, so New York City and New Jersey got snow but really did avoid the worst of it. Officials here have lifted the travel ban. They did that earlier this morning.

Later this hour, we'll hear from New York mayor Bill de Blasio. There has been predictable moaning and groaning that he overreacted by suspending subway, train and bus service. He's sure to face pointed questions about that.

We're also waiting to hear from Rhode Island's new governor, the situation there, vastly different.

BOLDUAN: But now let's get to the team who's covering the storm for us. Our Alexandra Field, she's headed toward the Massachusetts coast. She's in the car right now. We're going to be getting to her. Jennifer Gray is in the snowbound city of Boston, just getting walloped, and Chad Myers has been tracking all of it, is tracking every bit of the move of this storm for us this morning.

So New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, he said that he thinks they dodged a bullet, that the storm is nothing like they feared it would be, but that's just in the city proper, if you will. Areas to the north and east are very different story, and meteorologist Chad Myers is tracking all of it.

So, Chad, where is the storm hitting now? You've been following it all night.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We'll call it New England, really, eastern Long Island and New England, moving away from New York City and the tri-state, although Mattituck (ph), New York, picked up almost 25 inches of snow. That verifies the number, but that doesn't verify what was supposed to happen in New York City.

We'll take a look at what the models said, what we said and what the new model, the new and improved multimillion-dollar improvement National Weather Service model would have said had we listened to it.

There's the snow now in Boston and the cape all the way back down, a little bit of snow into the Hudson River Valley. But this is about done. This is about done for New York.

There's still a couple spots you may get another inch or two, but the big story, the big snow will be where our Jennifer Gray is, still a few more inches to go there on eastern Long Island, still a few more inches to go there. And the winds are still blowing. Wind chill right now where Jennifer is is four below zero.

It feels like that to you. It also feels like that to your pets. Please make sure that they're inside today.

Look at the winds. Nantucket just last hour, 64 miles per hour, and there's no power. That gets cold inside. Forty-one in (inaudible), 30 miles per hour in Boston making a little bit of a ground blizzard there.

There is still some snow to come. I'm thinking this is probably still too much. Maybe six to 12 in a lot of these areas. Let's say 12 to 24. This was the same story that the models had problems with yesterday. They were simply saying too much.

This is the model that we should have been listening to. It's the new and improved model called the G -- where is it -- GFS. It would have said right here about six to eight, maybe 10 for New York City, right on the money. Off the eastern Long Island, 12 to 24, right on the money. Boston, over two feet, that's what you're going to get.

So now we know. We took the new Tesla out for a test drive, and we liked it, and now we're going to keep this new model.

BERMAN: The key is, though, Boston is getting hit, Chad --

MYERS: Absolutely.

BERMAN: -- with more than two feet of snow.

MYERS: Yes.

BERMAN: There's a lot more snow to come. Even if it's not another two feet, it's another 10 inches or more. They are in for it today, and it's not done.

MYERS: That's right. And here's the model that we looked at. Here's the model. This is Old Faithful. This is the one we always looked at for years and years. It's 1- years old. Garbage in and garbage out, because it said 24 inches in New York City. Forecasters believed it. We should have believed the other one.

But, look, it's still got Boston right. It just didn't get New York right. And there's a lot of complainers in New York. But you're off work? So what --

BERMAN: You can complain in the comfort of your own home.

BOLDUAN: Someone also said there are a lot of complainers in New York, no matter what the weather is and no matter what anybody does.

So there you have it. Chad, thank you very much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

BOLDUAN: Chad is tracking it all for us this morning.

BERMAN: All right, so this bad news here I've been saying is the blizzard is pummeling parts of New England right now, and as Chad just said, the worse new is it isn't nearly done.

More than a foot of snow has fallen in Boston. Look, I actually saw snow totals shortly ago, over two feet already in parts of Massachusetts, way over one foot right now. And they could get up to another foot by tonight as Chad just said.

BOLDUAN: And hurricane-force gusts are a big part of this storm, knocking out power to the entire island of Nantucket, cottages flooded by the battering surf at this moment.

Meteorologist Jennifer Gray, she is in Boston for us. You've been watching this storm develop overnight, Jennifer. What have you seen? I mean, it's still clearly coming down right on top of you.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, the snow has been coming down at a rate of about an inch per hour. We saw it come down heavily last night beginning around 6:00 or 7:00, and it has not let up since. And we still have several hours to go.

On top of that, you get these incredible wind gusts that just carry the snow that's already on the ground, plus the snow that's in the air, and you cannot see anything. And we've had wind gusts of about 20 and 30 miles per hour out here. And then it will relax a little bit.

But you can see the snow all around me. You can barely see the harbor behind me. And it is coming down very heavily. We have seen plows come through, and they've done great job keeping some of these roads clear. This is one of the roads that has only been plowed about once, and you can see all the snow that's piled up just since they've been up here about an hour or two ago. So it definitely adds up quickly.

You were talking about those wind gusts, the hurricane-force wind gusts. We had a wind gust of about 78 miles an hour recorded in Nantucket, and that's where you get the power outages, the entire island completely without power.

Luckily here in Boston, we haven't had wind gusts like that, and so it's been keeping -- the winds at about 20, 30 miles an hour are strong enough that it's keeping the snow off the power lines, and so we haven't seen that buildup which is good news.

But just to take you around a little bit, you can see very powdery snow out here, and so when the wind blows, it carries it very easily, and so that's where you get those whiteout conditions, the visibility less than a quarter of a mile.

So we still have that travel ban in place here in Massachusetts, that blizzard warning still in effect throughout the entire day today. And so people are just encouraged to stay indoors so those plows can get out there and keep those roads clear.

John and Kate?

BERMAN: All right, Jennifer Gray on the streets of Boston.

You heard Jennifer Gray say she's never seen anything like this, because what she's seeing right now with that snow falling has been going on for hours and hours and hours.

BOLDUAN: A slow-moving storm, that's one of the biggest parts about this.

BERMAN: And hours more to come as well.

Now, it's bad in Boston. It's worse down on Cape Cod as you head down out to the coastal areas down there.

Our Alexandra Field is headed down toward the cape right now. I think she's as far as Scituate. Alexandra, what are you seeing?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John. We've just left Boston and we're on the 93 heading south to the South Shore area that you're talking about, which is south of Boston right down toward the cape. That should orientate our viewers a little bit.

What's really pretty disorientating is when you look out the window of our rolling coverage vehicle here and you see that there are practically no cars out here on 93, one car that just passed in the other lane, one car up in front of us. That's because this driving ban does remain in effect. Conditions here expected to worsen into tomorrow, so people are still being told to stay off the roads.

Of course, there is an exemption for media. We should point that out. We also know that, of course, emergency responders and all those snow- removal teams are the ones who are out on these roads.

The speed limit was reduced on the Mass Pike to 40 miles per hour, even for these people who are considered critical to being out there. What we're hearing is that there were some issues with cars spinning out, jackknifing, before roads were shut down overnight in the city of Boston, no major problems according to the mayor.

But we're heading south right now because it is the coastal areas that are an area of such big concern. That's because of the high winds and because of the flooding, and frankly they've already started to see it, and they could see more of it as high tide approaches later this afternoon and into this evening.

This is an area -- for people who live in the Boston area, they are well aware of the flooding problems that happened down there. We know that there have been evacuations. The National Guard has been called into the South Shore to do some evacuations in more of the highway flooded areas.

John?

BERMAN: That was amazing. You know, that whole shot, we saw two cars, and one of them was a snowplow. There's nobody on that road, Alexandra. I have never seen anything like that. And you're on 93, and for people that don't know, that's a busy, busy highway.

Alexandra Field, remarkable, check back into us when you get down closer to the water there on the cape.

BOLDUAN: Sounds like a good thing that there's no one on the roads.

BERMAN: Indeed.

BOLDUAN: The media does get a special pass on this because we are allowed to be on the road to cover the story along with emergency vehicles of course.

But we also want to take a quick turn to some other news that we're watching this morning. The Dow is down more than 350 points. Let's get kind of a read on exactly what this means.

CNNMoney's Samuel Burke is here. What is driving this? A lot of the conversation I'm hearing right away is oil prices.

SAMUEL BURKE, CNNMONEY CORRESPONDENT: This is the flip side of the low oil prices. I was at the pump in Phoenix.

BOLDUAN: OK, explain that. The flip side of good for us is bad for us. BURKE: So I was at the pump in Phoenix just a few weeks ago, and, oh,

it felt so good to only pay less than 1.90 a gallon, but what's happening is the energy companies aren't spending as much.

And today, just a few hours ago, we got an earnings report from Caterpillar. You know they make manufacturing goods.

BOLDUAN: A whole lot of stuff.

BURKE: They make a lot of equipment, and what they're saying is their report was far less than expected because energy and oil companies now aren't buying the equipment from them.

So that's what's happening. It feels good at the pump, but you don't want oil prices to go too low or it has this reverse effect --

BOLDUAN: Don't say that.

BURKE: -- where the oil companies aren't investing. So you want to have a kind of equilibrium there, a middle point.

BERMAN: We also have this global situation right now. In some ways Americans don't know how good we have it right now. It's an island of economic stability, relatively speaking, to the rest of the world, and the dollar is doing some funky things, or more accurately, everyone else's currency is doing funky things in relationship to the dollar.

BURKE: So the United States is doing well. The rest of the world isn't doing so hot. And even though the dollar is strong, much like oil prices, this can have a reverse effect as well. It means that our products in the United States are more expensive overseas, so that's hitting company's bottom lines like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, those type of companies.

So if you want to plan a vacation to Europe, now is the time to do it. Our dollar is strong, but be careful, because if it lasts too long, it could have these reverse effects, these unintended consequences.

BOLDUAN: Really amazing, Samuel. And just as we leave this story -- we'll come back to it -- throw up the one graphic showing just what a wild month it's been when you're talking about the Dow. Just look at this. This is just January so far, Samuel. It is wild.

BURKE: And, on top of that, Microsoft just had very bad earnings report last night. Windows isn't doing well. But I'm holding out hope because tonight we have Apple reporting earnings, and we know the iPhone 6 has done so well. So maybe Apple can give us a lift.

BERMAN: You don't like the market today --

BOLDUAN: Help us, Apple. Help us once again.

BERMAN: -- wait until tomorrow with that whiplash back and forth. Samuel Burke, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

BOLDUAN: Thanks, Sam. BERMAN: All right, coming up, we're going to get back to this blizzard, this monster storm. Have you seen the pictures from Long Island?

BOLDUAN: Have you seen them?

BERMAN: Have you seen the pictures of Long Island?

BOLDUAN: Have you seen them?

BERMAN: We'll show you these remarkable pictures from where the storm has simply been relentless.

BOLDUAN: And, later on, we're going to have an exclusive interview for you, President Obama sitting down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, the president and Fareed Zakaria. Fareed is here. He's going to have the details, coming up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Already seen a few accidents and just people swerving, going too fast and not judging how bad the roads are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay home. The roads are horrible, very, very icy, even -- with this thing, very bad.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Some of the most remarkable pictures we've seen all morning long from this storm come from the eastern tip of Long Island in the town on Montauk. The storm out in Montauk has just been relentless.

BOLDUAN: And it's really known for surfing. Not necessarily snow storms, but they are dealing with it, that's for sure. All morning long, we've also seen Cristina Alesci out in it. Let's check in with her. The extreme conditions -- I've been watching you, Cristina -- they seem to have been coming in waves. Is it better or worse right now?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's actually, we have a little bit of reprieve from the snow. It's been snowing quite consistently here, Kate. If I can just demonstrate for you how much snow is actually been accumulated. If I walk into this part of the deck here, it's actually covering my boots entirely and I'm not even really touching the floor of the deck. That means that we're at least 12 to 15 inches in and in certain parts of the deck, you can see behind me, it's much, much higher. That's because of the significant wind gusts that we've had. It's just blowing the snow everywhere. The one good piece of good news, in addition to the reprieve from the snow, is actually visibility. If you look out here, you can actually see the horizon in the ocean. I was not able to see this just a couple hours ago.

Actually, this just happened about an hour ago. If you look at the waves, they've actually calmed down, too. They were up to about 15 feet this morning. I'm looking out there and I'm seeing that they are quite calm. You mentioned surfers. One informal way of actually measuring how bad it is out here is whether the surfers come out. As you guys know, surfers love when the ocean is this turbulent. We're going to check out for them later today. Let me not underplay this, it's still very dangerous out here. We still have wind gusts and anything over 30 miles an hour for the wind is going to take down power lines. We already know that about 130 people are without power today in Suffolk County. We have our lovely workers out here shoveling and making some pathways for us. They've been at it all morning. That's a tough job. Thank you so much, sir.

You know, guys, we're looking at the beach here. This is a very important part of the tourism business out here in Montauk. There was talk originally about beach erosion. Fortunately, we haven't seen too much of it. I'll keep an eye out on power outages and other significant weather events out here. Back to you in New York, Kate and John.

BERMAN: It's interesting, Cristina Alesci is 6'4. When she stands in that snow, you get a sense of just how truly deep it.

BOLDUAN: You'd never know on TV.

BERMAN: Great job all morning. The winds there have been brutal. Hard to even stand up. Very, very impressive.

BOLDUAN: She talks about the surfing out there. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy right now.

BERMAN: In this kind of cold weather. I've stood right where she's standing for two hurricanes before. That area has been hit by weather very hard over the last few years. Here's to hoping they recover from this quickly.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, John. Absolutely. Coming up next for us, President Obama is on his way back from his trip to India and a quick stopover in Saudi Arabia. That's one of the topics he discussed with Fareed Zakaria in an exclusive interview. Also, drones. What did the president think of the drone that crashed in his backyard?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New developments on the huge Northeast blizzard in just a moment, but right now president Obama is about to head home from Saudi Arabia. He made a quick stop in the kingdom to offer condolences for the death of King Abdullah and to meet with his successor, King Salman. Abdullah died on Friday.

BOLDUAN: The president's Saudi visit comes on the heels of a three day trip to India. He also sat down during that trip with Fareed Zakaria for an exclusive interview. And Fareed is nice enough to be joining us from New Delhi.

Fareed, the president's decision to head to Saudi Arabia and personally pay his respects, it really does speak to the critical relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, but that doesn't come without criticism and you brought that up to him. FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": You know, Kate, there

are recent things that have happened. There's this blogger in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to a thousand lashes. There's the reality that women can't drive there. That a woman who wants to work there has to get the permission of a male. So I think for many Americans, certainly, there is this sort of puzzle. Why are we so closely aligned with a regime that seems so backward?

And the president was very up-front in saying, look, we have security interests and we have issues that we have to do business with them on. Essentially, the fight against terrorism. He made no apologies for the fact that we're going to do business with them, but he did say we will press them on human rights. We'll continue to do it in a consistent way. But not in a way that would overshadow or detract from the importance of maintaining a good relationship with them. Saudi Arabia right now is a kind of island of stability among the fires of the Middle East. So I suspect that it has become pretty vital in those terms.

BOLDUAN: The fact that he probably won't be bringing it up or pushing it, that's going to be met by continued criticism from human rights activists on this side and over there, as well. That's for sure, Fareed.

BERMAN: Fareed, you also had a chance to ask him about a little news that happened literally in his yard while he was gone. This small drone landed on the White House lawn. What did the president have to say about that?

ZAKARIA: It was interesting. He deferred the actual incident to the Secret Service, but then went on to talk about how this really opens up a whole new chapter that we have to figure out. He said this drone, the one that landed in the White House, could have been bought at RadioShack. Amazon is going to deliver parcels with drones, they say. If this is going to be as widespread as it is going to be or seems to be, we've got to have some rules of the road. He made an analogy to cyberwars and cyberspace that, you know, technology has gotten to a point where people can do stuff that we don't have any rules about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Americans have been very interested to hear about this drone that landed in the White House, your back yard, where you and your family lives. Are you confident that you understand how you would prevent the next one from being armed?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, this is a broader problem. I'll leave the Secret Service to talk about this particular event.

But I've actually asked the FAA and a number of agencies to examine how are managing this new technology because the drone that landed in the White House you buy in Radio Shack. You know that there are companies like Amazon that are talking about using small drones to deliver packages. This is -- there are incredibly useful functions that these drones can play in terms of farmers who are managing crops and conservationists who want to take stock of wildlife. And so there are a whole range of things we can do with it. But we don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all for it.

So I've assigned some of the relevant agencies to start talking to stakeholders and figure out how we're going to put an architecture in place that makes sure that these things aren't dangerous and that they're not violating people's privacy. And you know, in some ways, Fareed, this is similar to what's happened in cyberspace. These technologies that we're developing have the capacity to empower individuals in ways that we couldn't even imagine 10-15 years ago.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: I have to say, it didn't strike me that he was very worried about the fact that this drone had landed. His family lives in the White House. This was in his backyard. I suspect that the briefing he received from the Secret Service didn't alarm him too much. Kate, John?

BERMAN: As you said, it definitely does raise some questions, and he said as much, as well. Fareed Zakaria for us, having just interviewed the president. If you want to see the entire interview that Fareed did and there's so much more information that we can't even tell you right now, it's secret until Sunday. You have to watch Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday at 10:00 right here on CNN.

BOLDUAN: Thanks so much, Fareed.

BERMAN: Other news right now. This just into CNN, it does appear now that ISIS has posted a new online threat. The terror group is vowing to kill Japanese hostage Kenji Goto and a Jordanian military pilot within the next 24 hours. They say they'll do that if Jordan does not release convicted terrorists Sajida al-Rishawi. She's the would-be suicide bomber whose device failed to detonate in a string of otherwise deadly terror attacks at Jordanian hotels back in 2005. She has been sentenced to death.

BOLDUAN: Also in Libya this morning, gunmen reportedly with ties to ISIS set off a car bomb just outside the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli. This is a hotel that's very popular among government officials, as well as Western diplomats. They then shot their way up to the hotel's top floor. At least three people were killed in this six injured in the attack. That's according to Libya state media. Most guests and staff were evacuated to safety, but it's not clear if there were anymore casualties. A security spokesman does tell CNN three of the gunmen are still holed up in the hotel now surrounded by Libyan forces.

BERMAN: Keep you posted on that.

Meanwhile, new this morning, what sure looks like a possible Russian spy ring busted. The FBI has arrested one Russian national, two others were indicted in Absentia for allegedly working as deep cover agents for Moscow. All three reportedly tried to recruit city residents as intelligence sources, hoping to gather details on sanctions against Russia and development of alternative energy sources. One of the suspects has already appeared in U.S. federal court. The other two, both Russian government employees, have fled, authorities say, back to Russia.

BOLDUAN: And a candle lighting ceremony is underway at the sight of the former German-controlled Auschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland. This is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi camp. You're looking at live pictures right now from Auschwitz, a place where more than 1 million people were killed, 90 percent of them Jewish. Only 7,000 people were alive when the Soviet Army liberated the camp on this day in 1945. Let me say that again. Only 7,000 people were alive. Over 1 million were killed. A few hundred survivors are gathering there today along with heads of state and representatives from World War II allies.

BERMAN: One of the most important locations in the world as a reminder of what humans are capable of and not always good. Today also marks the tenth International Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the world pays tribute to the six million Jews and millions of others who were killed by the Nazis.

A statement from the White House reiterates a pledge to the millions of murdered souls and all survivors that it must never happen again.

And tomorrow night, please watch a powerful CNN special, "VOICES OF AUSCHWITZ", hosted by Wolf Blitzer. That is Wednesday night, 9:00 Eastern, only on CNN.

BOLDUAN: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)