(KERO) — The flow of water coming out of Lake Isabella has dropped recently and could go down even more with critical road work needed on Highway 178 in the canyon.
The road is currently shut down.
Lake Isabella sits at around 436,000-acre feet as of Thursday morning. The water being released out of the lake into the lower Kern has dropped to nearly 7,400 cubic feet per second.
In the water world, water is commonly measured in acre-feet. But what is an acre-foot? One acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of land, about the size of a football field, one foot deep. An average California household uses between one-half and one acre-foot of water per year for indoor and outdoor use.
California receives about 193 million acre-feet of water each year as precipitation (rain and snow), but there is great variability between regions. Yearly precipitation on the North Coast is about 90 inches but only 2 inches in Death Valley.
Much of this precipitation evaporates, leaving California with 78 million acre-feet in surface water supply (including Colorado River and Klamath River supplies) in an average year. Of that water: 28 million acre-feet to 35 million acre-feet are used by agriculture; 7.9 million acre-feet are used by cities and industries; and 26 million acre-feet are used for the environment.
There are no required evacuations but the road work on the 178 could dictate if and when the flow will need to be reduced substantially.
Captain Andrew Freeborn strongly recommends that everyone subscribe to the Ready Kern System.
