Wet Monday: Heavy Showers Drench Southland, Snow Blankets Mountains

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – A cold storm system brought heavy rain and windy, chilly conditions overnight Sunday to the Southland, with the showers continuing through Monday night.

Several major roads and highways saw flooding, creating messy driving conditions for morning commuters. There was also several downed trees and power outages to thousands of residents.

In Echo Park Monday morning, firefighters rescued a homeless man got trapped after a tree came crashing down onto an apartment building, also downing power lines in the process. He escaped with minor injuries. The Sepulveda Basin saw major flooding, where a man living in a homeless encampment also had to be rescued from the Los Angeles River overnight by firefighters. A Woodland Hills neighborhood was also flooded.

More than 5,100 L.A. Department of Water and Power customers were without electricity as of 8 a.m., including the areas of Cypress Park, Cheviot Hills, Harvard Park and Hollywood.

A flood advisory was in effect through 9:45 a.m. for parts of Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. A flood advisory for L.A. County expired at 6 a.m.

Wrightwood, Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs were all seeing snowfall. A winter weather advisory was in effect for the Los Angeles County mountains through 10 p.m., excluding the Santa Monica Mountains.

Elevations above 5,000 feet could see up to 6 inches of snow.

"We are going to have on-and-off rain throughout the day, thunderstorms possible this afternoon...We get a break as we head into tomorrow as another round of rain, another cold storm system drops south, and moves in for your Christmas Wednesday into Thursday too," CBS2 Meteorologist Danielle Gersh said.

A second storm is expected to arrive on Christmas day, dropping snow levels to 3,500 feet and bringing up to an inch of rain, according to the National Weather Service.