California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed

A photo here showing the scale of the hole.

[link to www.newsmax.com]

wow, I would not want that job

That dam starts overflowing all over the top this weekend. The overflow will destabalize the dam and it will collapse. Bye bye Sacraments....er...Sacramento.

I don't see how they could fix that in a 4 day window. Whatever attempt will just be washed away in minutes.

Part of the sidewall is now gone..

[link to sacramento.cbslocal.com]

Thank you for the updates. How is the Feather holding up? How full is the Yuba if you know? Any identified weak spots in the levee's?

Do you know the intersection of the 70 and the 20? My mom is just north of it. I wish they would just come for a visit. They are saying they will leave on Saturday maybe.

I just get info from the net, no more knowledgeable than anyone else. I am thinking about calling my friends/relatives in the valley for a heads up.

Stop the video at 1:33, that wall was there yesterday.

My opinion, it's time to start prepping for higher ground.

Good luck and don't forget the animals..

879.22

oops, replied to someone else's post, my bad..

btw, nice thread geo..

So check out the emergency spillway:

[link to ponce.sdsu.edu]

It basically looks like water just over tops the concrete. I would think that would totally erode the hill, but it sure looks like solid rock under the concrete spillway.

Not sure why they just dont open up the main spillway knowing all that concrete will be washed away and they will need to rebuild it. Better than the entire dam being breached and failing.

Billion dollar question, will that hill erode and compromise the dam itself?????

I know that intersection very well. Do you know where the rice dryers are? I'm about 4 miles due north of them, just over the Butte County line.

I know that Bullards is releasing a bunch into the Yuba, but I don't know how high it is running into the Marysville area.

They have done a bunch of work in recent year on the levees in the area.They were coring the levees down the center and pouring slurry walls. I saw them working at the north end of Marysville a couple of years ago and I believe they made it north to Gridley Rd. last year with the upgrades/slurry walls.

I am east of the RR tracks, which is where they cut off the evacuation order in 1997. They said we were far enough from the river and high enough to avoid flooding, even if the dam overtopped. If your people are west of the tracks or close to 70, they will want to have a plan in place.

The corp just awarded contracts for levie repairs that have been out to bid for almost a year

879.80

This is creepy, like the night we watched Katrina play out. People, just leave now. Your lives are worth more than anything else. Take off work, grab kids from school, pull out any money and get to high ground. Go camping if you have to, visit inlaws you hate, show up at old friends doors, just go.

If the dam just bursts, how much warning will you get? 5 min? Even if there is just a 1% chance if could suddenly burst it is too much.

Only 20 feet from reaching the absolute top of the dam. Still have more rain today and some tomorrow. Thankfully after tomorrow it will be dry for a few days.

Yes, but it takes days for the inflow to wind down after a storm.

Did not know this. Yikes!

So, it should overtop the emergency spillway sometime tomorrow? How much water is the emergency spillway designed to handle? I imagine there is the possibility of 250k-300k CFS running over sometime in the near future?

My mothers back property line is the 70 and had to evacuate in 97. Thank you for keeping this updated. So I can apply pressure. Years ago I had a prophetic dream about my mother scurrying up a hill to get into a school bus that was on it's side. Your know the high school with all the busses.

02/09/2017 10:00 880.42

The design capacity of the emergency spillway is 550,000 CFS. Not that I would ever want to see that happening.

880.42

Thank you for the updates. I just looked at the weather map. They are getting a lot of rain right now.

[link to www.wunderground.com (secure)]

Yes, it has been raining fairly heavily for the past few hours. There is a system that is literally parked in one spot, pouring directly on the Lake Oroville watershed.

[link to radar.weather.gov]

Last Edited by Crunch62 on 02/09/2017 02:06 PM

It is raining so hard here now that my satellite internet is only working intermittently. Heaviest rains now thru 6:00pm, then just moderate rain thru the evening...

Satellite now shows early indications of 2nd wave already forming for late Friday, and they show rain now instead of showers for tomorrow.

5 day break and then more storms next week.

I wish I could help, I have two extra bedrooms and lots of food, but you would have to drive through three states and then hike through 4' of snow to get here.

Nothing is going to happen

Seems like they should fill that hole with something just to keep the erosion down. Maybe some boulders. Maybe thick kevlar sandbags that are heavy enough to stay in place.

880.97

The spillway is now completely separated into two sections. They are opening the flow back up right now. I guess they finally realized they aren't going to save it.

Too little, too late.