Attacks trumps family, calls don juniors meetings with russia treasonous and says the white house is facing a category 5 in robert mueller. Trump firing back saying bannon, the man he once called friend, has lost his mind. The president s former White House Communications director Anthony Scaramucci is here live only on gma. Good morning, america. Well, that monster storm is starting right now and in some parts of the country theyre seeing the most snow theyve had in nearly 30 years. A live look at ocean city, maryland, dangerous wind conditions right now, blizzard conditions across the east coast and here in new york, were seeing the beginning of that winter bomb cyclone. Thats a live look at the roads in long island. Schools are closed across the northeast. 15 states in the storm zone. As you can imagine our team is spread out up and down the east coast and ginge us off outside our studio here in times square so, ginger, what is the latest . So here in times square its started. My eyes are already watering and you can see a little bit of slick snow. This is only the beginning, guys. This whole day most of your thursday going to be full of snow and ridiculous wind and then eventually ridiculous cold. Now, this thing, youve heard the term bomb. Thats been the meteorological glossary for almost 40 years nearly bombing out now meaning weve seen 20 millibars drop and the Pressure Gradient in six hours this. Is rapidly intensifying. Snow flying from North Carolina to maine at this hour. Those blizzard conditions and warnings for that go all the way from new jersey and virginia up along the coast including parts of massachusetts and maine and that is where we have to start this morning by going to a place that has been seeing it for hour, blizzard conditions, and thats our gio benitez. He is in norfolk, virginia. Gio. Reporter hey there, ginger, offs here are calling this brutal snowstorm. Tens of thousands of homes are already without power and its in large part because of these wind gusts that were feeling. A look at this wide shot we have here because im walking right now through about five inches of snow here, maybe even more and were talking about wind gusts of about 55 Miles Per Hour. Those are intense winds, so its only going to get worse here. This morning, that winter bomb of snow and ice going off creating a mess in the midatlantic. Virginia in a state of emergency. Cars stuck as the snow piles up. One driver desperately trying to dig out. Whiteout conditions a nightmare for early commuters. Hold up, all right. Reporter for parts of the northeast the storm is just getting started. Early this morning a truck in southern new jersey lost control jackknifed and flew off the road into the woods completely engulfed in flames. The woods and a nearby home catching on fire. Schools in new york, philadelphia and boston closed today, boston anticipating a foot of snow . Were out there on the roads and will be ready for the storm. We have 40,000 tons of rock salt ready. Reporter after a week of subzero temps parts of the Atlantic Ocean frozen solid. Watch as giant chunks of ice pile up along the shore in the outer basics pushing against this dock actually moving it. This way. So right now back out here live in virginia, the good news is were not seeing too many cars passing by here so people are heeding those warnings staying indoors. But really what comes next after this is that bitter cold. That deep freeze that people have to deal with. You know, the Power Company has been trying to be out here restoring the power to all of the homes and businesses but theyre having a hard time because of those very intense winds, george. What were seeing, wind gusts hitting 39 miles an hour but in some places they could approach Hurricane Force . Reporter yeah, close to it, crazy to think about. Weve already felt 55mileperhour winds, close to 60 Miles Per Hour, so this is just intense. Thats the big story here, the wind associated with this storm. Okay, gio benitez, thanks very much. George, to abcs Victor Oquendo in asbury park, new jersey, picking up strength and not only concern about the snow and powerful wind but coastal flooding. Good morning, victor. Reporter good morning, robin. All of that is a concern. Conditions only getting worse out here. The wind and the snow dramatically have been picking up just over the last few hours. If i turn my head that way you can see it is whipping right across my face here. To get an idea, there was no snow. All of this dropping over just the last few hours here. The gust of wind right now between 30 miles an hour right there but could get to 50. You can imagine what that will do to the coastline and beach here. Right now those four to eight feet and the conditions, robin, only getting worse. Visible is at an all time low, robin. I know its difficult for you to talk out there in those kind of temperatures but talk a little bit more about the potential for coasting flooding there. Reporter yeah, there is a huge concern because high tide is just starting to come up and will only get worse over the next few hours here under a coastal flood advisory, robin. Victor, thank you. That is new jersey. New england bracing for the worst of the storm, eva pilgrim is there. She is in boston right now and i see her got a big pile of salt behind you. Reporter oh, yeah, we are here on the salt right now this morning, george. New england bracing for a battle with mother nature. They are expecting to get the highest snow totals from the storm and their big defense is this, salt. Were here in boston. I just want to give you a little perspective as to how well prepared they are to deal with it. This is a huge mountain of salt. Were at the largest in the city. All total in the city they have about 40,000 tons of salt ready to go to put out on the roads. Overnight they were already out there starting to get these roads prepared for the storm ahead of it coming today. During the day today theyll have 700 trucks out there trying to stay on top of the snow as the snowfalls, but they are telling people to stay off the roads if at all possible and it seems that people are heeding that warning. Schools are closed. The city offices are operating on an emergency basis and a lot of the businesses have already closed. The ones that have not closed, those people we talked to this morning telling us theyre planning on closing early. George. Eva, they know how to deal with snow in boston. One of the big concerns, Power Outages. Reporter that is a major concern here, the Power Outages and theyre expecting temperatures below zero, at least feels like it behind this snow system thats coming through and so there freeze and your house could get very cold very quickly. So those are things theyre telling people to keep in mind as they watch what happens with this storm, george. Eva pilgrim, thanks very much. Keep in mind thats salt. Thats not snow but all that salt and its very much needed because were seeing just how dangerous those icy, slippery roads can be. Already causing accidents throughout the south and many drivers are getting into trouble. Even having to be rescued. Abcs Steve Osunsami is in georgia where the ice may have even caused a train derailment. Good morning, steve. Reporter good morning. I want you to take a look. This type of ice and snow is rare in the south but this is whats blanketing roads here. To put it in perspective we went looking for a snow shovel, ice pick, something to clean your car off and this putty knife is as close as we could find because they dont really sell a lot of those things down here. 300 pass miami to new york became the latest victims of the icy weather overnight when their train derailed at a station in savannah. We got a derailment. Reporter frozen switches may have been responsible. Nearly 300 passengers on board. Reporter this time no one was hurt. Two of the cars that derailed were just carrying baggage and passengers were moved to a different train and sent home. It will stay cold. That means stay indoors. Reporter across the south authorities are warning drivers that the roads are too slick and this could be you. In and around savannah alone, Police Report that more than 220 people were hurt in accidents on icy roads. Stay off the roadways. Drivers on their way from georgia to South Carolina overnight were stuck in slowmoving traffic for more than six hours. In a region where snowplows and salt trucks are as rare as snowflake, driving on the ice is an incredible risk. We just slid off the road. Drive with just slow down. Slow down. Reporter subzero temperatures along with the ice and snow have shut down highways and even entire cities along the east coast from the carolinas to south georgia, multicar pileups, spinouts and car wrecks are leaving hundreds out in the cold. Its just going to get worse as this snow keeps falling. Reporter the temperatures are supposed to rise here a little bit and some of this ice is expected to melt a little bit but then a new problem, its expected to refreeze so this continues, robin. It does and it is heading this way and were experiencing it right now and we have a road cam to show you what the conditions are like here in the new york city area. This is long island and if you dont have to be on the roads, dont. You cant go in the air. Thousands of flights have been canceled across the northeast. So many airports at a standstill right now. David kerley at Reagan National tracking the latest. Good morning, david. Reporter good morning, george. The airports are being right now its here in the midatlantic. Of course, that will move into the northeast. Heres a look at airports that will be affected today. Here in d. C. A couple. Philly, new york and boston which is going to get a lot of snow as far as total amounts and we are just starting the travel day and already nearly 3,000 flights have been canceled already and newark, new jersey, has been hit especially hard, nearly 900 flights have been canceled there. Of course, the airline saw this coming. They are offering waivers, if youre waking up, looking, supposed to fly into an affected area and dont want to fly they will most likely waive the change fee. Thats the good news. You can fly another day. The real concern its not so much the snow in this storm, its the ice from the cold temperatures and the wind that is going to cause problems at the airports. Yeah, weve seen that up and down the coast. David kerley, thanks very much. Very difficult travel day. Maybe these folks had their flight canceled. I cant imagine why theyre standing out here but cold temperatures so you got good company out there, ginger. I had to have friends. We brought friend as long for me. When you have a storm thats dropped 5. 3 inches of know in a place like charleston, South Carolina, Third Largest on record you know its going to develop and it is moving closer to the northeast so lets talk about how much snow you can expect and the timing. It moves through, this is happening now and it moves really quite quickly because it rapidly intensifies and then really new york city up through boston through the afternoon, it starts to diminish then by tonight its all but gone from new england. What it leaves behind is a foot of snow in the easternmost areas of say, new jersey or lyle, connecticut, rhode island, there will be a couple of swaths where you see one to even threeinch snowfall rates per hour so its going to come down heavy at times, visibility is going to be very low with those winds and im concerned about the Power Outages going back. Lets head back in though to robin. You come on in too, ginger. To the breaking news out west, a 4. 4 magnitude earthquake joeling people awake in the San Francisco bay area early this morning. Lets go to our Senior National correspondent matt gutman in california for the latest. Good morning, matt. Reporter hey, good morning, robin. That quake struck right beneath the university of california at berkeley just east of San Francisco and while it wasnt a huge quake it was shallow, only about seven miles deep so it was felt. Residents describe five to ten seconds of rolling as the jake rumbled and as you mentioned so many jolted out of their sleep. Check out these products knocked off the aisles at a supermarket. Dogs began to bark and alarms went off and whats keeping folk as wake right now is that this quake happened right on the hayward fault which is capable of producing a 7 magnitude quake which could be devastating right under that heavily populated area, robin. Still had to be very frightening for a lot of folks this morning, thank you, matt. We switch to politics and that bombshell book rocking the white house, Michael Wolffs fire and fury inside the Trump White House features blistering attacks on the president and his family from steve bannon, the strategist by trumps side during the campaign and the early days in the white house. It has drawn a furious response from President Trump now threatening legal action against bannon and our senior White House Correspondent cecilia vega is here with the explosive details. The white house on a war footing over this. Reporter yeah, it looks like they already are at war. Those lawyers for the president sent a cease and desist letter to steve bannon demanding he stop making what they are calling disparaging comments about the president or his family. Behind closed doors of the white house, President Trump allegedly critiqued his top aides calling soninlaw Jared Kushner a suckup, Senior AdviserKellyanne Conway a cry baby and former press Secretary Sean Spicer stupid. At the center of the fallout a man once in the inner circle who trump has called a friend, former white house chief strategist steve bannon. Theres nobody we think higher of than president own accusations between donald trump jr. , Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a russian lawyer whom they were told had dirt on hillary clinton. Bannon called it treasonous, unpatriotic and he said team trump, quote, should have called the fbi immediately. All in a tell all book fire and fury by veteran journalist Michael Wolff who had unprecedented access to the white house. In it bannon says there is a zero percent chance don junior didnt take the attendees of that trump tower sitdown to meet the president despite the president s insistence he knew nothing about it taking aim at ivanka saying she was a nonevent and became a white house staffer and thats when people suddenly realized shes dumb as a brick. 312 pages pulling the curtain back on the Trump Administration saying ivanka also discussed the possibility of running for president herself. The white house calls it trashy i think furious, disgusted would fit when you make such outrageous claims and completely false claims again the president , his administration and his family. Reporter but just months ago trump lavished praise on bannon. I have a very Good Relationship as you no he with steve bannon. Steve has been a friend of mine for a long time. I like steve a lot. Reporter now the president going public with an unprecedented rebuke saying, quote, steve bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Overnight on Breitbart News radio, bannon praised the president. The president of the United States is a great man. You know i support him day in and day out. Reporter wolfe goes on to write almost everyone on the Trump Campaign thought mr. Trump would not only not be president , they thought he should not be president. Even the president himself, wolfe says, didnt think he would win. And his wife was so opposed t he did, though her spokeswoman disputes it. No one is offlimits. The book says ivanka trump makes fun of her fathers combover hair and notoriously germophobic trump ordered white house staff not to touch anything, especially his toothbrush. Reprimanding housekeeping staff saying if my shirt is on the floor its because i want it on the floor and that he had a long time fear of being poisoned. Thats one reason he ate so much mcdonalds, the food was premade and no one knew he was coming. Now, the author says he spoke to more than 200 people for this book. The white house is trying to downplay the access he had saying he was on the grounds of the white house only about a dozen times. Aides say the author did have one brief conversation over the phone with the president after the election, george, but we cant verify any of this ourselves because they refused to release the white house visitor logs. Right, but even a dozen visits to the white house in the lot for an outside journalist. On another matter as this was happening we learned overnight the president disbanded the commission he set up to back up his false claims about voter fraud in the last election. Reporter exactly. They say so many states are refusing to participate in the investigation thats why they disbanded it. Youll remember it was set up by the president after the election based on these unfounded claims that millions voted in the election illegally. There is no widespread evidence of voter fraud. Cecilia vega, thanks very much. Coming up well talk to Anthony Scaramucci, the president s former Communications Director but first we want to go back to ginger right now. George, the windchill here is 14. The windchill in west palm beach, florida, 29 so this is a deep freeze and even colder air comes behind this storm. Look at those advisories. The snowy cities now. Meteorologist, much more on the storm througho