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REPORT COPYRIGHT VIOLATION IN REPLY
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Message Subject
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California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed
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Poster Handle
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Anonymous Coward |
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Post Content
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looks like it is currently rising at about the rate of 3/4 inch per hour... [ link to cdec.water.ca.gov] And this will increase rapidly over the next couple days as the heavy rains return tonight... Thanks for that hourly link. I only had the daily one, which is posted back on p. 1 I think. ANYWAY!!! Damn ... that current rise is 17 FEET PER DAY!! and the big NEW rains haven't even begun to fall in the watershed yet.
Lake is currently at 858.47'. The FULL DESIGNED FLOOD Capacity Dam is 900'. (as noted above per Wikipedia FULL EMERGENCY FLOOD Capacity is 935').
With only 41.5 feet of storage capacity remaining unless they can get water going out the spillway they only have about 2 1/2 days of increasing water levels until they hit the magic 900' FULL Food Capacity Level.
Well full flood capacity is the crest elevation of the dam. Most earthen dams have a slope downstream, so the water could theoretically flow over the top of the dam. Unless the dam structure fails because it has more weight on the upstream side, that's a slope failure. The overflow on the crest would act like a weir equation, and if it flows for too long obviously you'll get erosion of the dam on the downstream toe which could lead to failure of the embankment. Basically, the water can flow over the top for a while, and the dam should have been designed for that but you can never test that condition so you don't know.
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