Upper Kern
2 monitoring stations within this area in United States, holding 266 values between 1912 and 2026. A United States federal hydrologic unit at the eight-digit subbasin level — a drainage area, not a river. Many subbasins take the name of the largest river within them, and the gauges below are anywhere inside the area, including on tributaries.
The monitoring network within this area
Hydrionis holds 266 values from 2 gauges within it. Discharge is a property of a gauge and its reach, not of this drainage area, so this page reports the network and its records rather than a single figure.
How much of the rain came back out
A discharge in cubic metres per second cannot be compared with anything: the larger number may only mean the larger catchment. Divided by the area draining to the gauge it becomes a depth of water over that land, which answers a question a reader already has — of the rain that fell here, how much came back out as river?
Computed by Hydrionis from the published annual mean flow and the catchment area the station's own publisher states. It is not a water balance: the difference between rainfall and runoff is not evaporation alone but also change in groundwater storage, water abstracted and taken elsewhere, and water imported by transfer schemes — which is why a catchment can yield more runoff than the rain that fell on it without anything being measured wrongly. A different area figure rescales every value here by the ratio between them.
What the shaded periods are (1 event)
A shaded period marks when something was recorded, not what caused the shape of the line. Where the two coincide, they coincided.
| Event | Type | Period | Standing | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapse | Flood | 2005-08-29 – 2005-09-30 | Documented record | Compiled record |
View the data behind this chart
| Period | COMBINED FLOW OF KERN R AND KERN R NO 3 CA (mm) |
|---|---|
| 1912 | 181 |
| 1913 | 175 |
| 1914 | 437 |
| 1915 | 289 |
| 1916 | 678 |
| 1917 | 358 |
| 1918 | 261 |
| 1919 | 238 |
| 1920 | 278 |
| 1921 | 245 |
| 1922 | 393 |
| 1923 | 233 |
| 1924 | 88.0 |
| 1925 | 226 |
| 1926 | 173 |
| 1927 | 352 |
| 1928 | 157 |
| 1929 | 159 |
| 1930 | 170 |
| 1931 | 100 |
| 1932 | 334 |
| 1933 | 219 |
| 1934 | 121 |
| 1935 | 239 |
| 1936 | 361 |
| 1937 | 497 |
| 1938 | 569 |
| 1939 | 203 |
| 1940 | 348 |
| 1941 | 542 |
| 1942 | 338 |
| 1943 | 452 |
| 1944 | 248 |
| 1945 | 401 |
| 1946 | 280 |
| 1947 | 186 |
| 1948 | 164 |
| 1949 | 155 |
| 1950 | 278 |
| 1951 | 212 |
| 1952 | 594 |
| 1953 | 243 |
| 1954 | 249 |
| 1955 | 224 |
| 1956 | 399 |
| 1957 | 215 |
| 1958 | 461 |
| 1959 | 126 |
| 1960 | 142 |
| 1961 | 89.0 |
| 1962 | 315 |
| 1963 | 367 |
| 1964 | 153 |
| 1965 | 324 |
| 1966 | 263 |
| 1967 | 617 |
| 1968 | 198 |
| 1969 | 907 |
| 1970 | 261 |
| 1971 | 199 |
| 1972 | 132 |
| 1973 | 425 |
| 1974 | 355 |
| 1975 | 258 |
| 1976 | 116 |
| 1977 | 93.0 |
| 1978 | 659 |
| 1979 | 293 |
| 1980 | 658 |
| 1981 | 198 |
| 1982 | 547 |
| 1983 | 926 |
| 1984 | 343 |
| 1985 | 288 |
| 1986 | 619 |
| 1987 | 174 |
| 1988 | 144 |
| 1989 | 182 |
| 1990 | 100 |
| 1991 | 190 |
| 1992 | 137 |
| 1993 | 368 |
| 1994 | 155 |
| 1995 | 569 |
| 1996 | 429 |
| 1997 | 539 |
| 1998 | 646 |
| 1999 | 184 |
| 2000 | 224 |
| 2001 | 182 |
| 2002 | 195 |
| 2003 | 244 |
| 2004 | 210 |
| 2005 | 502 |
| 2006 | 493 |
| 2007 | 125 |
| 2008 | 256 |
| 2009 | 242 |
| 2010 | 413 |
| 2011 | 604 |
| 2012 | 165 |
| 2013 | 109 |
| 2014 | 96.0 |
| 2015 | 70.0 |
| 2016 | 188 |
| 2017 | 824 |
| 2018 | 185 |
| 2019 | 578 |
| 2020 | 152 |
| 2021 | 86.0 |
| 2022 | 116 |
| 2023 | 1,018 |
| 2024 | 325 |
About this series
| Source | United States Geological Survey — National Water Information System · US Government work — public domain |
|---|---|
| How the values came to exist | Derived Computed by Hydrionis |
| Period held | 1912–2024 |
| Completeness | 100.0% of the periods in that span are held. |
| Continuity | Continuous: every year from 1912 to 2024 is held. |
| Last read from the publisher | 2026-08-24 |
| Redistribution | Permitted by the upstream licences |
| Commercial reuse | Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this. |
| Methodology | How this was produced |
Every gauge Hydrionis holds within this area
| Gauge | Measures | Values | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| COMBINED FLOW OF KERN R AND KERN R NO 3 CA | burned area within 50 km, catchment area, mean river flow | 150 | 1912–2026 |
| KERN R NO 3 CN NR KERNVILLE CA | burned area within 50 km, mean river flow | 116 | 1922–2024 |
How these gauges were attached to this water
Assigned by the publisher to a numbered basin Every gauge here is assigned to this drainage area by its own publisher, which issues the area an official code — 18030001. A drainage area is not a river: it contains the tributaries as well as the main channel, and a gauge in it may be on any of them.
| Gauge | Evidence | Established |
|---|---|---|
| COMBINED FLOW OF KERN R AND KERN R NO 3 CA | Stated by the publisher — USGS site service, huc_cd field — https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ ; named from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset 8-digit HU (Subbasin) layer — https://hydro.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/wbd/MapServer/4 | 2026-08-26 |
| KERN R NO 3 CN NR KERNVILLE CA | Stated by the publisher — USGS site service, huc_cd field — https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ ; named from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset 8-digit HU (Subbasin) layer — https://hydro.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/wbd/MapServer/4 | 2026-08-26 |
What this record holds
Hydrionis decides which waters get a page, and which of those are offered to search, from what is actually held rather than from how the page reads. Five signals are counted; this record has 3 of them, which makes it a full profile.
| Signal | Held | Counts |
|---|---|---|
| Gauges holding a real record | 2 | no |
| Years spanned | 115 | yes, 20 or more |
| Values held | 266 | no |
| Distinct measurements | 3 | yes, 2 or more |
| Publishers measuring it | 2 | yes, 2 or more |
| Official identifiers | 1 | recorded, not counted |
Use this data
Use this data
- Machine-readable JSON
/api/v1/observations/by-subject/gauge-usgs-11186001.json - How to cite this, and who you must credit
- How these figures were produced
- Request this at a different scale, format or geography
Attribution and citation
Suggested citation for Hydrionis
Hydrionis (2026), Upper Kern gauge records, accessed 2026-09-02, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-upper-kern/
Cite Hydrionis where you rely on values Hydrionis computed, on the method that produced them, or on the compilation itself. The underlying measurements remain the publishers’ and their attribution requirements apply to you directly.
Where these figures come from
Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 11186001, parameter 00060, annual mean statistics. Licence: Open.
Method: Annual mean discharge as published by the USGS statistics service, computed by USGS from its own quality-controlled daily record. Hydrionis converts cubic feet per second to cubic metres per second and records the publisher unit alongside; it does not recompute the mean.
Data from the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Information System, a work of the United States government and therefore in the public domain.
Retrieved 24 August 2026.