Upper Kern News Today

The grounds of Frandy Park Campground and Camp Kernville were almost entirely under the Kern River during flooding on Kernville on March 10, 2023.

Get out and explore. Our reports cover the coast to the High Sierra, and Lake Isabella to New Melones.

There’s a new way to explore the Kern River and it can all be done from the comfort of your own home.

As record Sierra snowpack melts, an epic whitewater rafting season takes shape in California

The deluge from torrents of water surging down the Sierra Nevada mountains has caused billions of dollars in damages to farms and communities in parts of central California. But the whitewater rafting industry is thriving.

As the record Sierra snowpack begins to melt, it is sending immense volumes of water cascading through some of the most storied and beautiful rafting rivers in the world: the Kern in the southern Sierra, the Tuolumne, which flows out of Yosemite National Park and the American flowing out of the mountains near Lake Tahoe.

What else you may have missed: Where did California's 31 atmospheric rivers came from?; Feinstein resists resignation; and drugs and death visit upon a Malibu beach house.

As the record Sierra snowpack begins to melt, it's sending immense volumes of water through some of the most storied whitewater rafting rivers in the world.

Water officials and growers are concerned as the flow from the Upper Kern into Lake Isabella now reduces to a trickle in the coming weeks and months.