Drought-stricken Calif. seeing too much rain all at once

The drought-stricken West is seeing too much rain all at once. People in California are driving on streets submerged in water or covered in mud. Despite the most rain in months, it's barely making a dent in the drought conditions. But now these downpours are creating fears of mudslides -- as much as 6 inches of rain could fall by the end of the day, CBS News' Ben Tracy reports.

Parts of California are getting more rain in a day than they got during the entire month of December last year. Mandatory evacuations in Camarillo Springs northwest of Los Angeles were lifted, but mudslides will continue to threaten dozens of homes in the coming days.

"I've got officers out there, I've got officers on standby, officers on overtime," Glendora police chief Tim Staab said. "We are going to be here until this thing passes."

In San Francisco and nearby Santa Cruz, Tuesday was on track to be the wettest day in nearly five years with predictions of as many as five more inches of rain by Thursday morning.

"We're getting saturated, and it's a gully-washer," Santa Cruz resident Linda Lovelace said. "The leaves are just coming down and clogging the drains."

Meteorologists said it will take at least 10 storms this size to make an impact on the state's severe drought.

"We need a lot of wet storm systems above normal rainfall for the year probably for the next two or three years," National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Boldt said.

But all that rainfall isn't necessarily on everyone's wish list.

Ed Heinlein lives in Azusa and isn't taking any chances. A wildfire in January stripped the hillsides behind his home. Storms two months later flushed several feet of mud into the first floor of his house. He's spent $30,000 repairing and reinforcing his property.

"So we're just bracing to try to keep it up here," he said, "keep it from hitting the house and going into the neighborhood."

The state is expecting more rain Wednesday morning -- not quite as much as Tuesday -- but enough to impact the morning commute in a city where people have largely forgotten what the windshield wiper on their car is for.