Mike Hoover, a Santa Barbara geologist, wants to remind us of the Medieval Drought, the epic dry period that held California and the West in its grip for 400 years, beginning in 950 CE.
“That thing was really bad,” said Hoover, who mentioned the mega-disaster in his new book, Drought & Flood: The History of Water in Santa Barbara and Montecito. It was so bad, he said, that it may have led to malnutrition and warfare among the prehistoric Chumash.
“I keep telling people, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’” Hoover said. “We’ve been in an abnormally wet cycle in the last three or four hundred years, and that’s changing now. Climate change will amplify the ongoing trend to dryness.”