who can forget summer storms in 2012 when thousands of pepco customers lost power. the trees came down on transformers and high voltage lines knocking out electricity for weeks in some cases. d.c. mayor vincent gray appointed a private public task force headed by city administrator allen lou to come up with a plan for putting those lines underground. tomorrow morning the administration and pepco officials will sign off on a $1 billion proposal to make that happen. pepco customers have been warned quite some time ago we'll all have to help pay more in our monthly bills to bury those lines underground. >>> now is a good time to download our ipad app from the itunes store with the storm on the way. with a few screen touches you can view live radar and a live traffic map with realtime incidents. you'll be able to see weather- related closings. we'll begin monday morning at 4:00 sharp, a half hour early, with the latest weather and road conditions and if conditions dictate, a wusa9 help desk will be up and running. >>> coming up demonstrations here and in europe as the s

a short time ago, pepco did come out here and turned off the power. these high winds, it remains to be seen how long it will take pepco to repair the damage. >> thank you. after the storm passed through the district, something you do not see every day happened. lights out at the capitol. no light in the dome. do you know what caused the outage? >> they believe it had a lot to do with these heavy winds. things are back to normal now, the exterior lights are back on. you can tell how heavy the wind has been blowing. this is video of what the capital looks like starting shortly before 8:30 p.m. tonight. what they believe happened is the heavy wind caused a power surge and that knocked the exterior lights out. the interior lights were fine, but it was a strange sight. such an iconic building at night. they got it back up a little bit before 9:00. live outside the capitol. a raid at a northern virginia day care, the owner's husband was selling oxycodone seat away from where the children -- feet away from are the children were playing. police were tipped of

the pepco bills across the region are up 17%. many are higher than that. day, time we get a snow small businesses take a big hit. scott wishes this winter had never happened. likes it has been rough area and >> his business is off 12%. days have had a lot of where we have been open but we didn't do a full days worth of his nose. they can only shovel the sidewalk at his construction site. it is too cold to work on the house. >> i can get the walls poured. >> he says lost time is lost money. a pepco bill is usually $300. >> i had a $600 electric bill. i cut down trees to heat my house. it is rough. >> university maryland economist says the winter has hit the economy hard. >> $50 billion in lost gdp. >> car sales will build bouncing back -- car sales will bounce back. >> i was in the district the place was shut down. >> just ask this manager. he open for a while. nobody came. >> no customers. no money. impacts,ng list of salt him following drugs are shot -- salt trucks are shot. we have learned the state of maryland has had to released when he million dollars

pepco is working to get the lights back on for about 350 customers in d.c. and maryland. bge has about 1,700 customers with no power. most of those outages are in montgomery county. let's go live to megan mcgrath. she's in ashton with more now. megan, any problems out there now? >> reporter: barbara, plenty of problems. as you can see, i'm still wearing my hat, because it's still very, very windy out here. and so, we're seeing power outages. we're also seeing road closures like the one behind me here. lots of problems this morning. the trouble began before the sun came up, in laurel a utility pole brought down by the wind sent power lines onto busy route 198. it was closed in both directions for the morning rush. downed trees and snapped branches caused big problems this morning. in silver spring, a large tree fell on top of a house. and in ashton, maryland -- >> another day, another storm. >> it was scary. it was, like, really the trees -- the tall trees were just bending over. >> reporter: some of those trees fell. utility poles snapped, and transformers blew. >> just s

dominion virginia power says they have about 2000 outages in northern virginia and pepco and novak are reporting scattered outages. trees came crashing down all across the area. robert lyles reports one neighborhood is thankful to be alive. >> it sounded like a collision. i thought oh my gosh. >> she had no idea it was an oaktree slicing her neighbor possible men half. -- neighbor's home in half. [indiscernible] he heard wind outside of his home and then the big bang. >> i couldn't get out because there was a tree in the kitchen. foot pine tree slammed onto power lines leaving three homes in the dark. it dark end of the iconic exterior lights of the capitol dome. on ang wind toppled a tree power line and snarled traffic for miles. here at 198. down they think our will be restored by late afternoon. joseph kenny is trying not to be blown away. >> the kitchen in the hallway are gone. in silver spring, robert lyles, abc 7 news. >> firefighters are not sure if the wind caused heart of an apartment building to collapse in alexandria. it happened that the commonwealth crossing apartments. fi

we checked in with the local utilities, and right now, there are about 1,300 pepco customers without power and most of them in prince george's county, and in northern virginia, and dominion is dealing with 400 outages and bge has 1,200, and the most in howard county. >>> and you could hear it, and the wind is still howling. these are the flags outside of our nbc washington studios here in northwest d.c. and the windchills will dip back into the teens tonight, folks. doug is here with more of the chill in the air and the chance for, yes, more snow. doug? >> well, that is is right, guys. in the winds that we saw in the day yesterday and overnight last night, those were the strong winds and strongest non-thunderstorm winds since hurricane sandy. winds were gusting up to 60 miles an hour out at dulles last night. and looking outside now, the winds are at 18 miles per hour, and the windchill is down to 26. a cold afternoon for sure. the winds are gusting over 30 miles per hour, and 35 miles per hour in annapolis, and 31 in camp springs, and back over to winchester, and as the sun goes dow

pepco tells us they have 500 crews on stand-by. dominion virginia power and bg&e are also reminding customers to have emergency ready kits and be careful using space heaters and generatoring. and if you see a downed power line, don't go near it. call the power company and report it. >>> it looks like it continues to come down out there, tom. >> yeah. here behind us, there's a live view out the video window. the capitol. you can see it's beautiful. >> it is. from in here. >> it's unlike the heavy wet snow that can cause a lot of power outages. i don't think we'll have a lot with this, because it is such a fluffy, dry snow. it is sweepable snow, and, yeah, you do need to shovel some of that snow. we've had our camera on ward circle all morning long. there were times when you could not even see at all. but now, it's still coming down. it's still snowing. we can actually seaward circle. that is a live view from the sky watcher camera in northwest washington. and a live view of reagan national airport, where a few minutes ago, you could

pepco -- 4.5% dividend yield. you have got pacific gas & electric company -- again, the etf, or there are your top three, but utilities, amazing, right? higher dividend and earnings growth, lisa this year, on the s&p 500. >> we want to quickly highlight that couple of big movers in today's session. the first is caesars entertainment. shares of the casino operator are following after it announced it would sell $148 million in common stock. it had been restructuring more than $20 billion of debt because it does not generate enough cash to cover its expenses. they are trading at the lowest level since december. we will be back "on the markets" in 30 minutes shoul >> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west." signs of a turnaround at black terri -- we will see. the company is reporting earnings. we go inside one of yahoos nerve centers to find out how they are making apps more personal. first to check on your top headlines. twitter is getting ready to release app install ads fo

pepco reports nearly 5,000 outages. bge working on 4,700 power outages and semco has 2,700 without power. >> the wind was strong enough to force a ground stop that forced flights to abort their landings and led to delays. news 4's shomari stone reports from reagan with the latest. >> reporter: tonight the faa grounded flights but right now flights are allowed to take off. this wind has been very strong. the weather has been temperamental. we started with warm temps and went to rain, wind and low temps tomorrow morning. folks tell me weather has been ridiculous. heavy wind with gusts of nearly 50 miles per hour slammed the d.c. area tonight and the temperatures are dropping. the capital rover soccer team is playing a game at wilson high school. >> as far as the wind it is brutal. the bleachers have blown back and forth. other than that we are playing soccer and that is what we are out here to do. >> reporter: earlier this evening a band of heavy rain swept through parts of the d.c. area. in prince george's county it made

and maryland, pepco is working to get the lights back on for about 1,000 customers. bge has about 4,400 customers without power. let's go live to news4's megan mcgrath now. she's in laurel where a power outage is making the morning commute a mess there. megan? >> reporter: yeah, we have a major road, routes 198 through laurel, completely shut down in both directions here because of power lines across the roadway. take a look at the traffic signal there. you can see that it also is out. we've got a detour in place. you see the cones across the roadway here, as well as the electronic sign trucks here. we are seeing folks getting a little confused as they come upon this detour here. it's dark, people aren't necess. we've seen plenty of folks stop. they want to make the right-hand turn, they can't. they sit there for a while. we've seen close calls with traffic behind them nearly rearending them. take it easy. if you drive through the area. the detour is between van dusen and 11th street on 198. the problem is downed power lines. in the neighborhood, just behind me here

with pepco there are 426 customers affected in washington d.c. 2200 are affected in montgomery county, a little over 1,000 in prince george's county. dominion power says 39,258 customers are affected in northern virginia. >> lucky for you, derek, you don't have to worry about a bad hair day. >>> the shadows of a d.c. political corruption investigation today, mayor vincent gray lost an important endorsement in his reelection campaign. some speculate he could be losing support because of allegations that he participated in a shadow campaign funded now by convicted felon jeff thompson. others argue he might be gaining some sympathy votes. bruce johnson caught up with the mayor today. >> reporter: it was both a good and bad day for mayor vincent gray today. on the bad side he lost the endorsement of a key newspaper. the current newspaper which goes out throughout northwest washington today withdrew its endorsement of the mayor. the editorial says despite his strong records the heightened possibility that mayor vincent gray knew about the 2010 shadow campaign has regretfully forced us to w