If you ever visit Santa Barbara, and go to the airport, it is interesting to note that a little over 100 years ago, it was a port, but not an air port! They had a terrible drought for about ten years, then, it all ended in one long series of storms. The runoff from the storms completely filled the bay, turning it into a huge swamp. I WWII, they drained the swamp and built an air corp base on the nice, level ground. After the war, the base runways became the airport, and the base buildings were the beginning of UC Santa Barbara. They had built all the buildings up on the bluff out of the flood zone...
When I was a student there in the early '90s, they had a similiar drought. It was so bad that they built a large desalination plant to provide water for the city. Just before the plant came on line, the drought broke in another round of flooding!
Charlie