Folks.... there's no reason to guess. The National Weather Service has all of the cool tools available for your disposal via the interwebs.
Over the past 7 days, the areas of Soda Lake and Afton Canyon have received between 1.0 and 2.0 inches of rain. This is A LOT of rain for that region of the desert, which only sees about 3 inches a year on average, maybe 4 to 5 inches during a really heavy year.
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The lake bed itself is probably not flooded, but it will be a very muddy quagmire, especially since there won't be any warm weather between now and then to dry it out any. The canyon portion of the road (everything between the river crossing and the dry lake bed, since you'll be heading west to east) likely had considerable runoff and could have some significant erosion, but again, I wouldn't expect there to be much standing water anywhere. Probably some large puddles, and that's it.
The river level has a monitoring station at the Afton Canyon crossing. The crossing is currently sitting at 3.71 feet deep (having peaked at 3.77 at about 1:00 am on Thursday morning), which is mid-grill or hood-line height on most of our Xterras. It could reside a little before the trip, but we're also expected to get a little more rain on Saturday, so that could keep it pretty much where it is now.
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I would expect that you guys are going to have to go around, and I would suggest taking the 15 to Kelbaker Road (you can fuel up in Baker), and heading east for about 12 miles on the pavement before you intersect the Mojave Road. You can pick up the rest of the route from there, having bypassed Afton Canyon and Soda Lake. I know you guys want some adventure, but this kind of stuff scares the crap out of me. This is probably just the former firefighter in me, but my strong recommendation would be to just make that decision now, before someone gets stuck in a deep mud puddle and ties up your entire day recovering, destroys their engine sucking in water, slides down a slope and overturns, or gets stuck or swept away trying to cross the river (the water doesn't move fast, but 4 feet of slow moving water has tremendous amounts of momentum and force). It just doesn't seem like a risk worth taking, and I know I certainly wouldn't subject my wife and son to those kinds of risks for the sake of adventure and fun.
Please, don't take that advice the wrong way, and remember that I am not going on this trip so I have no skin in this game. Therefore, my opinion doesn't matter as much as your guys', I'm just trying to make you aware of every piece of information available in our high tech world. If you guys want to camp at Afton Canyon and send a scout or two up the road to cross the river and travel the canyon and look out over the lake bed, that might also be a good idea. They can radio back to the main group and you guys can always make the decision to go around if it's too bad at any point. It's also possible that you won't be able to talk (even on ham) because of the canyon, so keep that in mind as well.
You guys can monitor the river station at this link:
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=vef&gage=mjrc1Here's a video someone posted to YouTube a few days ago of a trip they took over the New Year's holiday. The water is a tad higher than it was in the video Randy posted, and this was before the 2 inches of rain fell in the area (river crossing is at about the 20 seconds mark). Assuming that these guys' tires are about 32-33 inches tall, I'd say the river crossing is probably right about 2.9 - 3.1 feet in this video. Remember that it's up to 3.71 now:
