Heading into February, things were looking grim here in the rugged hills north of Santa Barbara. While much of California was emerging from five years of drought, this giant reservoir had dwindled to a weedy channel at just 7% of capacity and was perilously close to being written off as a regional water supply. And then the rains came in unrelenting horizontal sheets. It was one of the largest storms in memory over the Santa Ynez Valley on Feb. 17, swamping historical records and causing the lake to rise a whopping 31 feet in depth in just a few days.