New yorks statue of liberty was closed this weekend, so visitors had to enjoy lady liberty from a distance. Were the ones that suffer. I guess this area is usually packed with people that want to go. Now nobody can. Reporter the gates are closed at the national hmuseum f the us air force in ohio. Facilities at mt. Rushmore in south dakota are closed. Roads and trails at great smokey mountains are open. Theres in bathroom, so that does make it a little hard. It would really be nice if they had those open. But you understand they dont have the staff. Reporter fortunately, the view and the long islawildlife been affected by the shutdown. Happening now, a uc Berkeley Student is about to return any moment to the bay area after almost being deported. We have a live picture for you. Oakland International Airport where luis mora just landed. He was visiting his girlfriend in chula vista when the two made a wrong turn while driving and found themselves at an immigration checkpoint. Mora was born in columbombia, c to the u. S. On a visa. He has just been released to return to the bay area. A live look outside over San Francisco. Thats dark out there right now. Storm clouds, i would guess. Showers expected to hit as soon as tonight in the city. Already touching the north bay. Those ominous clouds definitely showing whats to come. Look at satellite radar. You can actually see that system off to the north. If i zoom in and show you exactly where were seeing those showers at this hour, santa rosa getting some showers. But the majority of this rain seems to be sticking off to the north. That does not mean the rest of the bay area is not going to see some rain. The timeline shows this moving from north to south into the overnig overnight hours. Right now temperatures still in the 50s. Weve been starting off on the chilly side in the 30s. Hayward 56, san jose 57, San Francisco at about 56 degrees. Now, we are expecting to see another chilly overnight into early tomorrow morning. As far as the rain goes, this could affect your morning commute. Ill break down exactly what you can expect for tomorrow morning. Also well talk about that sierra snow coming up in just a bit. You can track the forecast and the timeline of the storm with our nbc bay area app. Its free to download on your smart phone. Nearly 5 million gallons of waste water has spilled into monterey bay. It was caused by an equipment failure. A number of beaches are closed along the coast until samples show the water is safe. Its one of the down sides of living in the bay area, the commute. These are live cameras in palo alto and emeryville. Traffic seems to be getting worse as more and more jobs are coming here. A San Francisco startup is highlighting the biggest trouble spots and the worst times to be on the road. Reporter the company is called zen drive. It uses sensors on your smart phone while youre driving to keep track of your behaviors like speeding or being on your phone, which they say makes some roadways more dangerous than others. The commute to and from San Francisco is a daily one for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of drivers every day. Slow traffic at 5 30 in the morning on 280 north is like 8085. With a simple click here, you can switch the direction. Reporter how about a website that gives you the safest route to and from the city . A website that uses sensors from drivers smart phones to wafr you about the most dangerous loads. Zen drive studied 100,000 drivers on 62 different bare routes to and from San Francisco during themont of november so they could figure out not the fastest but the safest route for commuters. There are behaviors you can avoid, but you cant control what other people are doing on the road. Reporter the result of the november study may surprise you. Its riskier to drive during lunch hour than normal commuting hours. Also the Golden Gate Bridge is the safest for morning commutes. The san mateo bridge is the most dangerous. He says the most dangerous bay area highway is 280. Weve posted a link to citizzen drives commuter tool on our website. Thats nbcbayarea. Com. The price of gas is on the way up. Over the past two weeks gas prices have jumped 4 cents. That brings the National Average for a gallon of regular 2. 58. In the bay area those numbers way higher. In San Francisco the average price per gallon 3. 29. San jose is 3. 17. According to the price tracking app gas buddy, if oil prices do not go down, gas prices may go up another 48 cents in the next few days. Still ahead, Vice President pence overseas, his words to troops in the middle east amidst the Government Shutdown. And a war heros remains returned. The longawaited home coming thats bringing closure to a bay area family. Sfx tinny headphone music sfx feet shuffling life can change in an instant. Be covered when it does. With a health plan through covered california. We offer free expert help choosing the best plan for you. And all of our plans include free preventive care. Financial help is available, so check for yourself to see what savings you qualify for. Open enrollment ends january 31st, so dont miss out. Because you never know when life. Will change. Get covered today. The middle east. Beginning a short visit that includes meetings with is Vice President mike pence is in the middle east beginning a short visit that includes meetings with israeli leaders. Mr. Pence was welcomed to telavivs airport by government officials. The Trump Administration infuriated the palestinians by recognizing jerusalem as israels capital. The Vice President spoke to u. S. Troops in jordan. The topic centered around the Government Shutdown and how it affects the military. You and your families shouldnt have to worry for one minute about whether youre going to get paid as you serve in the uniform of the united states. Know this, your president , your Vice President and the American People are not going to put up with it. A sense of closure today for a San Francisco family. The remains of a u. S. Army soldier missing in the korean war were returned home. The remains of 22yearold private first class James Leonard arrived at sfo this morning and were escorted to the family in a solemn ceremony. Leonard was reported killed in action while defending a south korean village back in 1950. His cousin says its been hard on the family all these years, not knowing when or if he would be found. Thats what we thought. Cant they find him . After that many years . They finally did, though. They never gave up hope. We appreciate that. Leonard will be buried with full military honors on tuesday. Still ahead, one last trip. The reason a local model train wont be running after a half century on the tracks. Im tracking a storm thats expected to bring showers in the next couple of hours to some areas. Also were tracking more snow for the sierra. Ill have a complete breakdown of the timeline coming up after the break. My husband is probably going to think im crazy. He thinks im going to see my sister sometimes the confidence to be spontaneous starts with financial stability. Once i heard it i was shocked. I just thought, i have to go get it its our tree see how a personalized Financial Strategy and access to j. P. Morgan investment expertise can help you. Chase. Make more of whats yours. With model trains. Back in the good old days, before video games, a lot of kids played with model trains. For over 50 years a napa club has launched generations of budding engineers. Its now fighting to keep its future on track. Reporter in the time when people liked their Technology Fast and new, theres a napa group that prefers things to chug along at an old time pace. Just inside the napa county fairgrounds, in a pair of world war ii era buildings, its the home base of the Napa Valley Model Railroad historical society, where club members as young as 8 years old and as old as the hills operate a sprawling 3,000 square foot h. O. Scale railway. It represents a scale railroad that runs from stockton to portland. Reporter the railroad is filled with small towns, big terrain and details so accurate, youd think someone shrunk down america. We actually have operating light signals, for example. The idea is to be able to show the public how a real railroad works. Reporter the club has operated in this building since 1970. John rogers has been a member since even before it found its permanent home. Weve been working on fine tuning this layout ever since then. Were coming up on 48 years now. Reporter if the operators of the fairground have their way, there will be no 49th year here. The fair expo board of directors recently adopted a mu manew mas plan to improve the fairgrounds. That doesnt include the railroad. The map shows in this location a parking lot. Reporter daniel jonas says the club was given until the end of last month to get out. The group dug in and filed a lawsuit accusing Expo Management of failing to first conduct an environmental review. Its also collected thousands of signatures trying to stop its eviction. It would be like a death in the family losing Something Like this that weve put so much into. Reporter Expo Management didnt respond to several calls asking for its take on the matter. The fairgrounds have gotten more visibility in recent years, now hosting the annual bottle rock festival. Club members point out the railroad is always open for fairground events and admission is always free. The community loses all the recreational value this brings. Reporter as the railroad rumbles toward an uncertain future, the trains continue to snake through the hills and towns of yesterday, not knowing what will come tomorrow. Watching that story, when i was a kid i had my train tracks. I had my trains. It was a lot of fun. Ive never had one or even seen one like that in person. Mine was nothing at all like that, but i had one. Thats neat. Well if you are heading up to napa right now, it is raining. Be careful if youre driving up there within the next couple of hours, because the north bay is expecting to see the majority of this downfall for all of this rain. But were still seeing soft light showers. Not seeing the heavy rain just yet. Current temperatures remain fairly mild, in the 50s. 57 in the south bay, peninsula 55, 54 for the tri valley. Check out San Francisco, 55 dpeeg degrees. The north bay already starting to get those showers. That storm system is moving from north to south. And we are expecting some pretty heavy rain overnight. You can see just how much on activity on the radar. Look at all that snow. We are expecting more snowfall over noinight in the sierra. Were seeing a couple more showers pushing through santa rosa and the napa area expecting some showers in the next 30 minutes. If you notice, a majority of the rain seems to be sneaking off to the north. But by 7 00 we start to see more of that rain moving through. Napa, san rafael, San Francisco. Right over those burn cscars, w are expecting to see moderate to heavy downpours into the overnight hours and into early monday morning. About 5 30 in the morning we are expecting showers, so expect slick roadways. The south bay kind of falling in the rain shadow for san jose. Not really expecting heavy rain totals for this storm. Sierra snow is looking pretty good. Were expecting that snow near 4,000 feet. By monday we expect a couple more inches. Wednesday into thursday, anywhere between 1218 inches expected for the sierra. Possibly up to 24 inches for the Higher Elevation areas. Wednesday is expected to be a bigger snow maker. Hoif as of right now, the sierra road travel conditions not expected to be so good. If i take this timeline through monday, which means including the overnight rain and tomorrow morning, less than an inch in santa rosa, nearly just over a half an inch in napa. Down near san jose, not even a quarter of an inch expected. As of right now, not heavy rain, but at least were seeing rain, which we very much need. Temperatures in the 50s. 56 degrees expected for oakland. A little bit warmer in san jose at 59 degrees. We did see that cold front sweep in friday into saturday and sunday which is kind of what brought frosty conditions early on in the morning. Long range outlook, once that overnight rain moves in, we see that Second System come in on wednesday and thursday. Thats when we could possibly see about two inches of rain, especially for the north bay on wednesday. Sierra snow anywhere between 1224 inches. If you are a skier or snoe snowboarder, thats the conditions youre looking for. Over the next seven days well keep the 50s in the forecast. Dont wash your vehicles or put away the umbrellas just yet, because we are still tracking the arrival of a better chance or more rain coming into wednesday, not just for San Francisco but also inland areas. Were expecting Early Morning showers on monday and then a very rainy wednesday. Something to look out for definitely. Still ahead on nbc bay area news at 5 00, going through for the gold. One california athlete in bobsledding has another job. The way he spends his off time that is just as fulfilling. Who are these people . The Energy Conscious people among us say small actions can add up to something. Humongous. A little thing here. A little thing there. Starts to feel like a badge maybe millions can wear. Who are all these caretakers, advocates too . Turns out, its californians its me and its you. Dont stop now, its easy to add to the routine. Join Energy Upgrade california and do your thing. That includes many from Northern California la as the countdown continues to the winter olympics, team usa is taking shape. That includes many from Northern California. Last weekend members of the u. S. Bobsled team were named. One of the drivers grew up in san jose. This will be nick cunninghams third olympics. He says walking in the Opening Ceremony in 2010 in his team usa uniform was one of the proudest moments of his life. That is until a few years later when he put on a different uniform. What you are about to see is what an olympic bobsledder sees. In this case, nick cunninghams point of view as he pilots a sled, skidding along a sheet of ice at close to 100 miles per hour. Which all makes what you are about to hear nick say a bit surprising. Believe it or not, im not i dont like to do death defying stuff. Reporter what the soon to be threetime olympian means is that if youve drained hard enough and smart enough, what seems dangerous to others is simply skrus just doing your job, much like nicks other occupation, sergeant in the Army National guard. That was the great thing about 2014. I was able to go represent my country and represent the u. S. Army and the u. S. Military. Reporter a special World Class AthleteProgram Allows nick to both serve his country as a construction engineer and train for the games. Although this past year, those dual responsibilities forced nick to make a difficult decision. My unit was deployed while i was in the World Class Athlete program. The hardest decision i had to make as a soldier was, do i go with my unit or do i try to represent my unit at the olympics. I couldnt do both. Reporter nick, who grew up surfing in monterey and went on to be a football and track star in high school and in college, chose to stick with his sport. Ultimately nick decided his job is to make his country proud. And there is no greater theater in all of sports in which to do it than the olympics. In the army, you have a great deal of respect for people that wear the uniform that are ranked higher than you. And you have generals reaching out to you on social media saying congratulations and theyre happy what youre doing, you cant put that into words what that means. So now in addition to all the pressures most athletes feel, nick has a little extra. He wants to prove to his unit that he made the right decision by bringing them home a medal. The head of a popular north korean girl band made a visit to the south. She crossed the border into south korea today checking potential venues for the winter olympics. She was part of an official delegation that drew a huge crowd of media wherever it went. Look at this. She also heads a north korean art troop. That is a mob. The art troops performances will be the first by a north korean group in south korea since 2002. Blame it on the sheep. The unusual call chp officers in marin got. Were dubious when somd to report a herd of sheep on the loose. Chp officers in marine say they were a little skeptical when someone called to report a herd of sheep on the loose. When they followed up on the report, there was indeed a whole lot of sheep where they shouldnt be this morning. The animals were grazing just off of route 37. The rancher quickly showed up to corral the sheep and bring them pa back home. Tonight the sheep are no longer on the lamb. Somebody was counting sheep. Theyre probably running away from the rain. When it starts raining, it gets wet outside and they probably dont like that. Were going to see the heaviest to have rain overnight into early monday morning. Expect a pretty slick commute not only through San Francisco, but even the south bay. Were talking 50s for the next seven days and then another storm moves in on wednesday with more chance of heavier snow in the sierra. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching. Tonight, shutdown day two, the blame game intensifies, but is a compromise in the works . As hundreds of thousands of federal workers prepare to stay home. Tonight we look at the impact on the military. Our exclusive interview with the Vice President as hes criticized for a controversial move during a visit to volatile region. Surreal scenes from north korea, lester holt inside the country as it prepares to compete in the winter olympics. The american federal prosecutors say is a senior isis commander, and what his mother in new jersey has to say about it. Back flips, head locks, spine busters, the enduring popularity of a pop culture force now 25