Commuters May Get a Dousing

The tail end of a weather system that began over the weekend and brought cold, wet and windy weather may bring more rain today.

Showers should end by midmorning, giving way to partly cloudy skies, according to the National Weather Service.

The storm that arrived Sunday evening and continued through Monday morning dropped rainfall ranging from a tenth of an inch in parts of the San Fernando Valley to three-quarters of an inch on Mt. Wilson, the weather service reported.

Monday night, snow fell near Gorman, and snow plows kept Interstate 5 near the Grapevine open. At lower elevations hail fell.

The California Highway Patrol logged twice as many collisions during the Monday morning commute as it did the previous Monday, when roadways were dry. But CHP Officer Rosa Ray said it’s “never the rain’s fault. It’s people who don’t know how to drive in the rain.”

In the early hours of the storm Sunday night, a car carrying a Sun Valley family veered off the northbound Golden State Freeway near Griffith Park and rolled over. A 12-year-old girl, who apparently was sharing a seat belt with another passenger, was killed.

Soon after, a car and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus collided on a slick downtown bridge, killing the car’s driver.

Power outages affected several areas of Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power reported.

Hotels, office towers and several jewelry businesses downtown lost electricity before office hours Monday morning.

The outage set off burglar alarms in the jewelry district, but no security problems were reported, police said.

In Jefferson Park, falling palm fronds knocked out power to 2,500 customers, including a convalescent home where officials had to move about a dozen patients while power was being restored.