welcome to the north pole also known as midtown, manhattan as you look out over 59th and fiftd. the buses are stranded in the streets. >> it was incredible coming in this morning, russ. there were so many cabs, buses, everything stranded. 16 to 20 inches of snow. now you're looking at cambridge, massachusetts which is also getting pummelled which snow. it's all along the northeastern seaboard. >> that's true. the snow is still falling. a look at times square in new york city. you can see no one is on the roads. getting out of town, forget about it. it's a nasty day here in the northeast. >> it's good for a snowball fight, though, if you're in the market for that. >> let's get you caught up to date. the brutal nor'easter continues to hammer the region. a state of emergency has been declared from north carolina to maine, some areas are expected to get as much as two feet of snow. and thousands of flights have been canceled including 1400 in new york city's three major airports. we have correspondents giving coverage of the blizzard. we begin with seth dow in cambridge where the storm is hitting. good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, russ. yes, as you mentioned the snow is still falling here in the boston area. it's expected to continue through midday. because of the holiday a number of schools were already canceled. now of course many more will be too. in some cases non-essential personnel are asked to stay home. and how you see this weather might be determined on what you have to do today. whether you look outside the window and see a wintry wonder land, or just a big mess. it's a wintry white-out. as a powerful blizzard blankets the northeast this morning. with up to two feet of snow expected in some places. states of emergency were declared from the carolinas all the way to maine. the storm which brought an unusually white christmas to parts of the southeast, dumped snow as far south as mississippi and georgia. it pushed north on sunday, aided by a strong low pressure system off the mid-atlantic coast. gaining strength along the way. the wet heavy snow knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people. it created treacherous conditions up and down the eastern seaboard. >> we're asking everyone to stay home, stay off the main thoroughfares. >> this storm turned deadly in several cases as drivers ignored warnings to stay home. a storm becomes a blizzard when significant snowfall is coupled with sustained winds or gusts above 35 miles per hour for an extended period of time. and this one surely qualifies. even sunday football wasn't spared. the philadelphia eagles game was shifted to tuesday. overnight coastal cape cod saw gusts up to 80 miles per hour. >> it's a hassle. >> it should have snowed on christmas. that would have been better. >> reporter: it's a difficult commute for any one who has to drive around the northeast this morning. one of the big issues in massachusetts is coastal flooding and wind gusts are still making wreaking havoc across the area. russ. >> seth doane, thank you so much. rebecca. >> and the powerful blizzard brought new york to a standstill. let's go to correspondent elaine quijano in times square. >> good morning to you. you know, at 7:00 a.m. on any monday morning times square here would be bustling with cars and pedestrians. not so today. it is snow piles in the streets and the streets are practically empty in the wake of that massive storm. a blizzard of the size and power is rare for new york in december. more than a foot of snow had fallen across the region before midnight. at the astonishing rate of an inch to two inches per hour with as much as 18 inches in brooklyn, and 20 inches east on long island by early morning. making matters worse, wind gusts up to 64 miles per hour. new york's mayor michael bloomberg said the city would spare no expense. >> we're going to plow the snow, clean the streets and then worry how to pay for it. >> wind chill effects dropped temperatures to single digits as tens of thousands are without pow e white-out conditions make streets in and out of town treacherous. one brave soul was spotted skiing down traffic clogged avenues. and the highways that lead into and out of the city barely get cleared when they are coated with another layer of slick snow. >> we've got several vehicles stuck on a hill, plow vehicles that got stuck on the hill. we had to pull them out. very treacherous. >> even snow plows and more than 2400 sanitation workers are finding it hard to keep up with the relentless snowfall that's expected to continue until at least noon today. and here in manhattan, the digging out continues, the most activity that we are seeing right now, people shoveling their sidewalks here. and crews clearing out all of that snow. rebecca. >> no snowball fights yet apparently. thank you. if you are flying call your carrier because it's very likely that you won't be going anywhere. thousands of flights have been canceled and cbs news correspondent michelle miller is in laguardia airport with the latest on that. good morning, michelle. >> reporter: good morning, rebecca. on average 70,000 people fly in and out of laguardia airport every day. but look at it. it's a ghost town. while some 250 passengers were stranded overnight, the good news is the numbers weren't higher. here in the northeast, all three major new york airports, jfk, laguardia and newark suspended operations overnight and are closed until noon today. some passengers made the best of a difficult situation. >> if you travel, you got to be prepared for any of the elements. >> hoping to keep the number of stranded travelers as low as possible, the airlines started canceling flights on saturday. but there was no getting ahead of this storm. even at boston logan a flight preparing to take off for paris was turned around. >> we thought we were going to be the last plane out, then you know, it turns sour. >> reporter: delta canceled 850 flights sunday, u.s. airways 679, continental 265, american, 262. hundreds more have been canceled through this morning. the blizzard rare for a december in new york complicates the trips of christmas travelers either coming or heading home. if the weather wasn't going to do it alone the frustration is threatening to strip the warmth off the holiday weekend. train travel has been crippled as well. amtrak shut down train service from new york all the way up to maine as well as service in some parts of virginia. crews worked overnight clearing the tracks but still no word on when service will resume. meanwhile, bus passengers were forced to find other ways to get around sunday as greyhound canceled scheduled from north carolina to canada. >> it could have been so much simpler, then the weather reports started coming in. it was just -- very frustrating. >> reporter: airline officials expect to catch a break by mid morning but as you mentioned rebecca, airport officials say if you have a flight scheduled to leave this morning call -- or this afternoon, call ahead, get a departure time before you head out to the airport. operations are scheduled to resume between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. this evening. rebecca. >> it's good advice. michelle miller at laguardia airport. >> we have a special weather contributor with us this morning from indianapolis. we kid you not, her name is sarah snow. sarah snow, good morning. >> good morning. don't blame me, please. i didn't bring the snow. >> welcome. >> thank you very much. nice to be here this morning. quite a big day for the weather this morning. we are still getting some snow accumulation outside. that's going to tamer as we move throughout the day. you can see rain further to the east but we're getting snow here in new york city, and that is continuing up the east coast right now. we actually had a phenomenon where we had thunder snow which happens from the friction of the ice crystals in the clouds. it was a pretty interesting phenomenon yesterday evening. that cleared out, though. what we're witnessing is snowfall, 15 to 30 inches in new york city and new jersey, that's tapering getting less and less as we move north. 12 to 20 inches in portland. and that's all going to taper off by about this evening. a few watches and warnings, but those should clear by midday and through the evening. back to you. >> sarah, thank you. her name was sarah sunshine last summer. i'm just saying. it is sarah snow. >> we're happy she's here with us. and of course we're happy she's here to walk us through all of the snowy details in this part of the country. and around and she'll be back with a forecast for the rest of the country, but first, we turn to betty nguyen. >> an investigation is under way into a bus crash in egypt. eight american tourists dead after more than 20 were injured in the crash. elizabeth palmer has the latest. >> here's what's left of the tour bus after it slammed before dawn yesterday into a dump truck filled with sand. it was the middle bus in a convoy of three. passengers on the other vehicles saw the crash. >> peeled away the side of the bus. bodies were everywhere. terrible. >> reporter: the dead are reported to include six women and three men. among the injured survivors, 18 were evacuated to cairo, two of them in critical condition. >> ambulances were there just in a matter of minutes. miracle workers. everybody pitched in and helped out and got them in the ambulances and got them off to the hospital. so they say -- saved many lives i felt. >> reporter: the group had been on the way to see the famous temple on a road that is known to be dangerous. in october, six tourists were killed when their bus crashed on the same route. and last month eight foreign tourists were killed when their bus flipped over on a mountain road near the red sea. notice, egyptian police have had to launch an investigation into the third fatal crash in as many months. elizabeth palmer, cbs news, london. police in rome defused a package bomb at the greek embassy. package bombs exploded in the italian capital last week injuring two people. a group with ties to greek anarchists claimed responsibility. >> reports of package bombs at three other embassies this morning were false alarms. terror charges against nine suspects in britain, those happened today, a police van brought the suspects to court this morning. they were arrested in london last week, the nine men are charged with conspiring to cause explosions in the uk and other terror-related offenses. three other suspects were released without being charged. in afghanistan this morning three people are dead and more than two dozen others injured when a car bomb exploded. the blast was in the southern city of kandahar. also in southern afghanistan a nato service member was killed in a roadside bombing. she was known as the ivory queen of soul. ♪ i just want to rock the world ♪ >> singer teena marie died at her los angeles home apparently from natural causes. she often described herself as a white soul singer. her hits included fire and desire, lover girl, and square biz. teena marie was 54 years old. >> in other news, hugh hefner is getting married for a third time. the 84-year-old hef nener annoud his marriage to crystal harris. in a twitter posting hefner called it, quote, his happiest christmas weekend in memory. if that is the case my name should be tracy fog. plenty of fog here in the bay area this morning dense fog inland, locations, to the bay as well as some patchy fog along the coastline. conditions for the afternoon, mix of sun and clouds, keep some fog in the forecast especially some of our valleys, rainfall tomorrow a few showers also in the forecast, wednesday and thursday >> and that's a look at your weather. russ, back to you. >> sarah, thank you. turning to the cold subject of politics, president obama and his family are on vacation in hawaii and yesterday they attended church at the marine corps base. robert gibbs says it's likely the president will run for a second term. imagine that. joining us is michael shearer. now it's game on can we expect changes in the president's priorities in the next two years of his term? >> this is about as surprising as hugh hefner getting married again. they have been planning for six months at least with hard plans of who would take over the campaign once they transition out for the re-election. if you look back, when the president came into office if you just chart the number of times he has been to swing states like arizona or indiana or north carolina, there was never any doubt he was planning to run for re-election. in terms of a shift it's happened. you saw it in the lame duck. the president is shifting away from his sort of legacy priorities that the american people weren't very happy with, like health care, to the economy, to dealing with the deficit, to appealing to independent voters. >> the president's run in 2008 was historic in so many ways. how will the 2012 campaign be different >> it's a real different thing. president obama came into office on a wave of enormous expectation. expectation even white house officials said they could never fulfill. the american people know president obama as a person who is not going to just bring hope and change in broad sense but is going to struggle like any president has. so he has to run on his record. the white house is hoping barring unforeseen incidents that he will be able to run as the person who brought the country out of the worst economic recession since the great depression. they use that phrase all the time. as the guy who saved the country from this economic downturn and if you look at the economic projections right now we should be in much better shape 18 year or two. >> what do you expect the republicans to hammer on in 2012? >> they are going to say the hope and changey thing was not real. you know, it didn't bring the appeals that -- the improvements that you wanted. you saw a lot of this in the 2010 race. they were saying are you basically better off now than you were a few years ago? it's possible that even if the economy is improving in 2012, the american people's home values will still be lower than they were in 2008, you know, their job prospects may not be as bright. so, the republicans are also going to battle on the economic front. >> michael, we expect changes in the senior staff. how do you think that will affect the campaign? >> the president and the white house have made very clear they don't want a whole sale runner-up. i don't think it's the case you'll have new gurus. people are going to rotate out because they are exhausted. it's a grueling couple years. david axelrod going to -- i think you'll see more continuation than change. >> michael thank you very much. we appreciate it. and coming up this mofrnday morning after a model was found dead. we'll have the latest on the case. >> also, many happy returns, after a huge holiday shopping season we'll 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