them if he would say he knew back then but didn t move quickly for an executive order or whatever may be the case. jay carney dodging specific questions about when the president knew. at times he turned the tables blaming government lawmakers for the government shut down standoff. i did not think the republicans it was the right thing to do to shut the government down, did not seem disturbing to republicans would cause all of the other consequences of shut down. they choose instead to shut the government down. the house voted unanimously to restore the benefits. we will not see movement in the senate. they blocked more than a dozen bills from the who us. heather, back to you. elizabeth prann live for us from washington. thank you. also this morning an extreme weather alert. thousands of people could be dealing with a lot of flooding as the storm is moving up the east coast. maria molina is in the weather center with more on that for you. good morning maria.
the latest on where the storm is going. maria molina has been tracking it for us. good morning maria. good morning patti ann and heather. it is heartbreaking what s going on. you have the topography across western parts of colorado so when all of that rainfalls on the mountains it runs down into the streets that s what produces the wall of water, that rise in water levels among many of the streets and streams up here making the flooding situation much worse. you can see the radar the past 48 hours more thanches of rain in boulder and denver and across areas east of denver. there are reports that as much as 11 inches of rain have fallen out here. all kinds of reports but the issue is really that we have again the runoff. other sections of parts of new
a billion dollars has been spent so far and they say they are diverting another $600 million from other areas just to fight these fires. maria molina has more for us now. good morning maria. good morning. 51 major wildfires across parts of the west. including states like california, parts of oregon and also the state of montana. out here we are not looking at good news. we have more dry conditions more low humidity and strong winds in the forecast out here. i want to start out with the drought conditions. we are experiencing severe to extreme drought in so many of these states pretty much across the entire western u.s. that is what provide the fuel for the wildfires to continue to burn outside of sections of nevada and even into parts of utah. we are look fire weather watches up in montana and state of washington due to low humidity and strong winds in excess of 30 miles per hour along with warm
now to an extreme weather alert 34 major fires burning more than 1,000 square miles in 11 western states. they have been fuelled largely by severe drought conditions. there s good news this morning the lightening sparked wildfire that joined 8 homes at a utah resort town is now 50 percent contained. for more on the fire danger we turn now to maria molina. she is tracking third day of possible flooding in another part of the country. good morning maria. unfortunately across sections across northern rockies and parts of the central rockies we have the elevated wildfire danger still in place. red flag warnings are in effect and wildfires in nevada and utah. we are looking at low humidity as low as 5 percent humidity. that is not good news for firefighters trying to put out these wildfires in this region. you are looking at hot temperatures and gusty winds gusting up to 30 miles an hour.
this, hail the size of golf balls. take a look at that picture. there was a lot of wind and heavy rain coming down. we had golf ball sized hail. after that the wind got real high so we knew it was coming so we went ahead and ran into the hallway. while we were in the hallway we heard the vines and we heard it sounded like a train and we could feel the walls shaking and the wind it was real heavy, heavy, heavy. we will bring you the latest updates as they develop this morning especially after the press conference this morning. for more on those tornadoes let s go to maria molina who has been tracking the storms in the extreme weather center. good morning maria. good morning. we are hearing reports of the tornado possibly one mile wide. that is enormous. it is enormous.