Bob,
How can this be? I was under the impression that prayer was strictly prohibited by CA law along the coastline for three miles seaward and 5 miles in. Perhaps you meant that CA's indigenous people performed their traditional (and inoffensive) rain dance and Mother Nature, pleased with their more harmonious lifestyles, obliged.
I do remember a parched summer in Ohio, maybe 1964, when many Catholic parishes dedicated Mass and prayers for rain one Sunday. Not a cloud in the sky, we went out that hot afternoon for an extremely rare matinee (Mary Poppins) and it was raining dogs and cats when we came out. Don't recall if that was the end of the drought, but some 50 years later, I remember that day in clear detail (full matinee price was $0.50, half of which came from my $0.50 weekly allowance).
Notwithstanding the terrible plight of your great state, here is an excerpt from a recent WSJ article on the subject:
"After a deluge late in 2012, 800,000 acre-feet of melted snowpack was flushed into the San Francisco Bay. Regulators worried that reservoirs could overflow if the heavy precipitation continued. Yet they didn't want to harm the smelt by pumping more water south. All that flushed-out water would come in handy now.
"California also has limited surface water storage because green groups oppose building new reservoirs or expanding existing ones like the Shasta Dam. Construction could disturb species's habitats. Reservoirs also encourage population growth, which is one reason many northern California communities rely heavily on groundwater."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303947904579341280943894944Here's rooting for rainy but playable conditions this week. It is one non-major I really enjoy watching. There really is no place like the Monterey Peninsula.