MIDDLE KINGS · good between 1,800 and 900 cfs at Rogers Crossing

Wrapped: Jun 21 → Jul 01 — a 10-day window

Gauge read 338 on Aug 18 — it hovered in the 850–890s for a few days, then let go. 64% snow bought 10 days; the median year gets 21.

Our call

April 1 said: mid-June — from the snow survey alone, 11 weeks out
June 1 said: Jun 15 — with spring temps in hand, 3 weeks out
River did: Jun 21 — 6 days behind the call; the cold spring pushed harder than we modeled

How this season played out

The gray dash is the median year on this gauge (1988–2025) — still up near 3,700 cfs on days this season was already dropping into the band. That gap is the thin snowpack; the slow, even slope is the cold spring. (The daily rise and fall is the melt cycle, high each evening, low each morning — simulated here from the daily gauge; the live page runs on hourly data.)

Why we called it

Snowpack was 64% of normal on April 1 — thin. Everything pointed early.
But spring ran cold, slowing the melt to ~100 cfs a day — that pushed the date back and stretched the window to 10 days instead of letting a warm week collapse it to 3.
Dry winter soil soaks up the first melt, so low-precip winters come in a touch earlier still.

What goes into this call — and where to check it yourself

Snow: 13 snow courses in the Kings high country — Bishop Pass (11,200'), Charlotte Ridge, Bench Lake, State Lakes, Blackcap Basin + 8 more (CA DWR, measured ~Apr 1 & May 1)
Flow: Live: CDEC KGF (Pine Flat full-natural-flow — this page shows it ÷ 1.25, the Rogers Crossing scale) · paddler scale: Dreamflows — Rodgers Crossing · pro tool: CNRFC Pine Flat inflow ensemble (the river forecast the reservoir operators read)
Weather: Basin temperature & precipitation 1988–today (ERA5 via Open-Meteo) · NWS pinpoint forecast for the Kings high country · CNRFC basin temp plot
History: Every spring 1988–2026 on this gauge; 38 of them train the model.

Track record — every call since 2016

year	we said	river did	miss
2016	Jun 30	Jul 03	3 late
2017	Aug 19	Aug 11	8 early
2018	Jun 23	Jun 19	4 early
2019	Aug 09	Aug 08	1 early
2020	Jun 14	Jun 09	5 early
2021*	May 28	May 16	12 early
2022	Jun 14	Jun 12	2 early
2023	Aug 31	Aug 29	2 early
2024	Jul 07	Jul 01	6 early
2025	Jun 28	Jun 23	5 early
2026	Jun 15	Jun 21	6 late

Misses run about 4 days, 8 at the worst — except the asterisk year, which gets its own paragraph. Every "we said" is the June 1 call, the one you'd book flights on (2021's is the April call — by June there was nothing left to call). "River did" = under 1,800 and staying under. May doesn't count: the Kings routinely dips under in May, and 2022 did it twice.

The model runs a few days late — the river usually comes in slightly before the call, and the 2027 retrain corrects for it. The two years it called late (2016, 2026) both had a late heat spike at the finish: sustained heat keeps the melt up and holds the river above the call. Heat spikes show up in the 10-day forecast, so the model uses them too.

*2021: dust on the snow. Dust-darkened snow absorbs more sun, and the whole pack melted at once — in May 16, under 900 by May 28, gone before the season normally starts. Every forecast in California missed that spring, including the state's. It's shown on the chart but left out of the error stats.

These are forecasts, not gauge readings. Check the live gauge before you commit to travel. Seen a run come in? Let us know — real dates improve next year's forecast.