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

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Shook. Uh ....

DHOOM..UH.

DHOOM 5TH

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All of the rivers here in Cali are low. There's not enough water anymore.

Well Duh... go look it up.

Yeah, the big mud brick is drying out, for sure.

Really dry conditions locally. Forecast is for 107 tomorrow, no rain in sight.

The dams above the Oroville reservoir are all owned by PG&E.

We all know how well they maintain their infrastructure. LOL

I used to long ago track their levels... don't even have the links for that anymore.. that is why I let you all do it.

The drought and drying can cause issues for the weak places.. and might creak more "cracks" so to speak shough the reservoir suddenly fill.

Oroville reservoir has long been associated with seismic events due to rapidly filling or emptying.

"Detailed seismographic monitoring since 1975 has revealed a relation of earthquake occurrences within 20 km of Lake Oroville to the seasonal variations in lake levels. Seismicity decreases during filling of the lake and increases during drawdown."

[link to www.johnmartin.com]


These events obviously have a significant impact on the dam itself. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

The core block of the Oroville Dam is predominately made of clay soil. Mountains of it were extracted from the area known as the 'Clay Pits' just west of Oroville proper.

Clay soil is considered 'expansive soil', because it expands and becomes gooey when wet. When is dries, it shrinks and cracks. Certainly not the best material to build a dam, but it was cheap and plentiful in Oroville area during the dam construction.

I dont know if this link will work.

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

California Water Restrictions are going to be DRACONIAN this year. Apparently most if not all of the BIG reservoir lakes in California are WAY BELOW their normal pool level for this time of year ... and by now everybody should be aware of the situation wrt the Colorado River, which is going to restrict water drawings from that river (though for now it appears California will be the least affected because of it's Senior Drawing Rights).

A HUGE amount of the population in the West is effectively living in a Desert Environment ... which they can do ONLY because of the huge investment in Water Impoundment and Water Moving Infrastructure which literally moves drinking water hundreds of miles in places so as to provide it where mother nature chose not to. A great book on this western US conundrum is: "Cadillac Desert".

WATER is the life blood of an Urban area. Without it the urban area dies. A city can only exist if it has water so as to support it's inhabitants. No Water? First industry MUST shut down and then if that doesn't reduce water use enough people MUST LEAVE that area if they are to survive.

How bad is this drought going to be? If it goes on for another two years it will be the worst since the West became highly populated ... and will definitely change the lifestyle and economy of that region of the country.

AND ... it's not just California. It is also Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and yes even Denver.

I another dream the other night urging anyone in California not to get too comfortable because really bad things are coming for California. It still says the Oroville collapse will be what happens up at Almanor.

that was my concern in part .. the clay and then the errors otherwise in construction. clay foundations around homes in my state ruin basements and houses especially in cycles of drought and rain.

Oroville will collapse and sadly some want it to collapse... hope fully it won't get "help" in that one.

With a capacity of 1.3M acre-feet, Almanor is a sizable reservoir. Output is not controlled through spillways, but rather an output tower that directs the overflow to powerhouses downstream.

A sizable weather event with large inflow could overtop the Canyon Dam that retains Lake Almanor and result in uncontrolled releases into Lake Oroville downstream.

Another concern is seismic activity. In 2013, a 5.7 magnitude earthquake shook the Canyon Dam area, followed by hundreds (or thousands) of aftershocks in the following weeks. The aftershocks were all centered directly on the abutments of the Canyon Dam. A little bit strange.

This report from USGS on this seismic event is interesting to read if you have the time. It is 55 pages long.

[link to pubs.usgs.gov (secure)]

The visionary who posted back when the original Oroville problems first emerged had a description of events that would have fit exactly a situation where Oroville was filled to the gills and there was an upstream failure of Almanor which then caused an overtopping of the Oroville dike and it's subsequent failure.

Part of her description was that there was some advance warning, as in 3 (??) hours or so, that an event had occurred but communications were down and thus there was little knowledge at Oroville itself, or down in town, that a disaster was shaping up. That would make a LOT of sense if a decent size EQ were to hit the area taking down communications at the same time as a dam failure at Almanor, or even that EQ being the cause of a dam failure at Almanor.

In any event if I lived where Crunch is and a moderate size EQ would hit the Oroville Dam area or up stream near Almanor I wouldn't wait for any news ... I would be heading to higher ground ASAP so as to wait it out and see what was going to happen. That 2013 5.7 EQ right at that upstream dam is bothersome to me, and if it happened once it can certainly happen again - possibly when the lake is even higher.

What's the risk with the drought? Less chance of a catastrophic flood?

Low risk at the current low reservoir levels. The problems could occur if the inflows increase rapidly, as during a sizable wet storm. Rapid rises would place incredible stress on the structures.

Elevation 688' this morning. Only about 40' to go to match the lowest ever recorded elevation. And it isn't even July yet.

We likely won't see any rain until late October at the earliest.

Oroville dam has spalling going on with it as did that condo in Miami that collapsed had spalling going on with it.

the condo in Florida did not collapse... it was on purpose wired and taken down. It was destroyed on purpose.. what the purpose is.. is yet to be seen. But its MURDER.

The way the level is dropping the record low could be reached before July is out.

THOSE OLD LINKS ARE BACK HERE SOMEWHERE...WOULD HATE TO FIND THEM AND THEN...NOT LINK...STILL, YOU'D HAVE THEM...IF
ANY OF THEM BREACH..COULD BE ENOUGH TO POP OL'OROVILLE NO MATTER HOW LOW IT IS..UH.

686.27

ONE THIRD FULL!

40% OF 'HISTORICAL' AVERAGE.

ENTIRE STATE HAS VERY DRY RES...

..REALLY LIKE THE WAY U R THINKIN' BOUT THIS!..CAPS.

IT WENT DOWN 13 AND 1/8TH FEET IN ...

..IN 11 AND 3/4TH DAYS..?!?!?..IS THAT RIGHT?...

GOING DOWN OVER A FOOT A DAY!...

average over 1.3 ft daily last few days