The question of how communities and individuals adapt to changing climatic conditions is of pressing concern to scientists and policymakers in light of the growing evidence that human activity has modified the Earth's climate. A number of authors have suggested that widespread changes in human settlement and migration patterns may occur in response to the future impacts of human-induced climate change, such as sea level change, changes in agricultural yields, and increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The author investigated how rural populations responded to a period of adverse climatic conditions in rural eastern Oklahoma during the height of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, with particular interest in those households that adapted by migrating to rural California.