Kaweah River Snowpack–Good News for Los Angeles Area Rafters
Posted May 10, 2008 by MalinaAs you know by now, water numbers across golden (well, still pretty green actually,) California are perfectly normal this year–which is perfectly lovely news for whitewater sports enthusiasts.
The story on the Kaweah River, in Southern California, is a little confusing. If you google water stats for the Kaweah you’ll see numbers that are a little higher than what we reported in our “flow prediction report” a little while back. Here’s why: Snow water content in the Kaweah Watershed is at around 120% of normal this year. However, since 2007 was pretty dry, the ground and plant life is prepped to soak up a lot of the run-off this spring. This means less will flow into the river, which is why we are predicting that this will be a “normal” rather than a “high water” year.
The reason this is still good news for Southern California rafters is that the 2008 season on the Kaweah will be longer than it was last year, when there weren’t very many weekends the river was running at great flows. We think the river will peak sometime around the Memorial Day Holiday weekend.
If you’ve never rafted the class IV whitewater of the Kaweah River Canyon, check out the video we shot there last summer to give you a taste……office cubicle one day, screamin’ whitewater the next. Cowboy up!