About Water Volume

[Bernard]

Here's an insightful entry from the California WaterBlog with regards to water volumes. In context of what has been happening with this wet season, crazy stuff like we have seen on the Kern, this is worth a read:
https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/03/12/explaining-water-units-to-real-people-who-like-basketball/.
I highly recommend following this blog. The archives are full of insights into California water, fisheries, and climate issues etc. Speaking of the Kern and Kernville - whew. Scary stuff. I am concerned.
B.

[McFlyfi]

Cool article.
I find the numbers fascinating. The Kern peaked at about 45,000 CFS on March 10, flooding the campground just above the bridge through town, and flooding the park below the bridge.
46,000 CFS is more than an acre foot (43560 CF to an AF) passing by every second. Water usage of an acre foot is generally described as enough water for a household of 5 for one year. In one minute, that's enough water for 300 people for a year. In an hour, that's enough water for 18,000 people for a year.
How many gallons of water is that?
7.48 gal/cf x 45000 = 336,600gal per second; 20,196,000 per minute; 1,211,760,00 per hour. That's 1.22 billion gallons in an hour. Staggering.
Equally staggering is how quickly the water entered and exited the system. At about midnight on Friday, March 10, it was at about 125 CFS. By about 4 PM March 10, it was at it's peak of 45,000, a period of about 16 hours. Since then, river has subsided. Today at 10:30, it's right at around 5000cfs, which is about 15 times what it would be normally at this time of year.
https://www.dreamflows.com/graphs/day.104.php

How do the fish survive? I assume they can find quiet water, but that water is choked with mud and ash. I am certain this is not the first event of it's size, nor will it be the last, and the fish have made it so far.

I definitely want to check out the upper river this fall.

[1mocast]

incredulous numbers! thanks for translating them to numbers we can relate to. i for one love to geek out with these statistics.

The reservoirs are filling up!

[rayfound]

This is interesting, emphasis mine.

In terms of water use, most of California’s roughly 8 million acres of irrigated agriculture uses 3-4 acre-ft per acre annually (520,000-700,000 basketballs per acre/year) each year totaling about 26 million acre-ft per year, or 4.5 trillion basketballs of water per year.

California’s urban water users, almost 40 million people, use roughly 140 gallons per capita per day (74 basketballs/person-day or 27,100 basketballs/person-year), totaling about 7 million acre-ft per year, or 1.2 trillion basketballs of water per year of urban water use.

Which is to say, about 80% of water use per year in California is agricultural. And look, I 100% believe growing food is a good use for water. But it does demonstrate that improvements in water usage for agriculture has a MUCH MUCH higher potential to relieve the impacts of drought than anything we can do at home(I say as someone who has removed lawn and replaced with drought tolerant landscaping).

[Ants]

Thanks Rayfound for the interesting comment. Yes, about 80 percent of the water use is allocated to farmers. However, how the ag industry uses that water is their choice, not ours. The water rights are like a bank account - the values are there, how it gets spent is up to the account holder.

As a municipal user, you can influence the agency that supplies your water. How other folks exer ise theor water rights is outside of hour control. Sigh.

As far as ag use goes, most folks do not have a complete picture of the factors that the are involved. Just think of this as an example when your ex-wife wants to tell how your should spend your money.

Hoping to spread a little more insight.

Ants