Water levels rising in the Kern River, Isabella Lake and small lakes in Bakersfield

Steven Mayer, The Bakersfield Californian
Updated ·2 min read

Jan. 8—Any way you measure it, the southern valley and the Kern County mountains have already seen a rip-roaring rainy season.

And it's not even close to being over.

As of Thursday afternoon, the water level at Isabella Lake stood at 57,399 acre feet, a gain of 702 AF over the previous 24-hour period. Just one week before, the lake had been below 49,000 AF.

Early last week, the upper Kern River was pouring more than 1,000 cubic feet per second of storm water into the lake — although one source said the river above the lake peaked at close to 2,500 cfs. As of Thursday afternoon, that massive volume had slowed to 661 cfs.

By Saturday, the lake was poised to pass 60,000 acre feet and the water promised to continue rising.

"Things are looking wonderful right now," said Tom Moore, who operates Kernville-based Sierra South Mountain Sports, which organizes whitewater adventures of all sorts on the Kern River.

Moore keeps close watch on a number of data points, and believes the snowpack that feeds the Kern will reach 100 percent of the April 1 end-of-season average sometime this month.

"They should be able to fill that lake, and it should be a banner year," he said.

For more than a decade and a half, the water level in Isabella Lake has been limited to a "restricted pool." Due to safety concerns with the dam, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mandated that the lake could only contain about two-thirds of its capacity until the Isabella Dam Safety Modification Project was complete.

While there's still more work to be done, the Army Corps has essentially finished the safety modifications, raising the earthen dam 16 feet, buttressing its strength, adding a huge new emergency spillway, and repairing other flaws in the 70-year-old structure.

"It is my opinion that we now have the most modern dam in California after having the most dangerous dam," Moore said.

One fact that concerned many in the Kern River Valley was when the water started raising the lake level, the Corps of Engineers doubled the outflow downstream from the lake, from 147 cubic feet per second to 299 cfs — then it nearly tripled the releases to 412 cfs.