美国国家公共电台 NPR California's Near-Record Snowpack Is Melting Into Raging Rivers

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's Independence Day tomorrow, which for most Americans means fireworks, barbecues and a day out in the sun. In California, it could mean skiing on the Fourth of July. The wet winter covered the Sierra Nevada and many of the western mountain ranges in a deep, lingering snowpack. Now some of that snow is melting, and it's proving dangerous for people downstream, some who are just looking to cool off. Here's NPR's Nathan Rott.

NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE 1: The Kern River, nature's equivalent to taking a bucket of water to the highest point in the continental 2 U.S. - more than 2 miles above sea level - and dumping it into a granite 3 chute, a chute that twists, turns, dips and drops some 160 miles to the flat floor of California's Central Valley below. About halfway 4 down that path at a wider, more placid 5 stretch of the river is the town of Kernville and a gentleman named Tom Moore.

TOM MOORE: How is it?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Unintelligible).

MOORE: All right.

ROTT: Moore is the owner of Sierra South, a rafting and kayaking company here in town. And this isn't the first time that he's had an NPR microphone shoved in his face. I visited him two years ago near the end of California's devastating 6 five-year drought when he looked out at the depleted 7 river from this very spot and said...

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MOORE: We call that a creek 8.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Yep.

ROTT: Today, we just say...

MOORE: Yeah...

ROTT: ...It's a river.

MOORE: ...This is not a creek.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: This - this is a raging river.

ROTT: Two years ago, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of this water, was just 5 percent of normal. This year, the snowpack was pushing 200 percent. It was one of the largest snowpacks ever recorded. And as temperatures have risen, the river has reacted in kind.

MOORE: Two years ago, I'd look at it as my teenager that was just sitting on the couch doing nothing. Now it's my raging teenager that is just all over the map.

ROTT: Moore says that's been good for business. Whitewater recreation, after all, is far more lucrative 9 when there's actually white water. But it's also come with a price. At the bottom of the Kern River Canyon 10 where it hits the flats near the city of Bakersfield, there's a sign by the road.

ZACH BITTLE: That says that we've lost 280 lives since 1968 to the Kern River.

ROTT: This is Sergeant 11 Zach Bittle with Kern County Search and Rescue.

BITTLE: That was updated the Friday before Memorial Day. And since then, we've lost six. So next year, we're going to have to add at least six to that sign.

ROTT: Six and possibly seven - at least one other man has since gone missing upstream. Some were recreating. Some just went out for a wade 12. Bittle says that people need to know.

BITTLE: This is not the same river that you may have visited last year.

ROTT: The water is moving with 10 times the force that it was a year ago, Bittle says. Riverbanks are less stable. Hazards are submerged. And this isn't unique to the Kern. Rivers up and down the Sierra Nevada - and throughout the West - are experiencing flooding with the snowmelt, aided by recent hot, summer days. Homes have been evacuated 13 by the King River, further up California's Central Valley. And water experts like David Rizzardo, with California's Department of Water Resources, aren't sure how much snowmelt is still yet to come.

DAVID RIZZARDO: Most of the snowpack has melted off. But what we've noticed even during the heat wave is that the area of snow that is still covered up there didn't really reduce.

ROTT: It just got shallower.

Rizzardo says, it's hard to look for any sort of historical perspective for guidance because what we've seen in the last few years from near-record drought to near-record moisture, is so unusual - or at least it was.

RIZZARDO: One of the worries with climate change is that we see extremes more often. And the extremes are even more extreme than we've seen in the past.

ROTT: Back in Kernville...

UNIDENTIFIED GUIDE: Awesome 14. Go ahead, and exit the boat. Hold onto your paddles for me.

ROTT: A group of rafters gets off the river. Olivia Vantol is the one with a big smile on her face.

OLIVIA VANTOL: That was my first time river rafting. I chose a great year to start apparently 15 (laughter).

ROTT: Her mom, Judy, looks a little less thrilled.

JUDY: I was really nervous.

ROTT: Olivia shakes her head.

You weren't that nervous?

VANTOL: No - and the fact that you have a life jacket and everything. And they'd done this how many times?

JUDY: Yeah, that's true.

ROTT: Mom still looks a little unsure. But it's time to load up. They're signed up to go down the river one more time.

Nathan Rott, NPR News, Kernville, Calif.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIGNAL HILL'S "AMBER LANTERN")