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

DOOM!

Indeed.

Doom off.

Didn't get the city, but it might be worth calling them to see if they'll put a couple sixers aside for ya..

3-4 years ago when the lake was way down, I figure some folks found a mother lode of gold somewhere around there. There were at least 2 mining camps at the bottom of that lake. They built bridges over them that are still standing. Only one way to get the gold.

~ Keeping it GLP

don't forget the shasta dam is about overflowing and it also drains into sacremento....this place is truly fucked!

I went into a small town off I5 today, saw more CA cars than usual, I think the really smart people headed north and haven't stopped

Amen

If I understand it correctly...
that (during submersion) was a sinkhole that appeared
at the bend in the road.
so...
it was not 'flowing' with water coming OUT...

It became a DRAIN...
finding a CAVITY inside the 'fill' area UNDERNEATH
the parking area...
which was
CONTRIBUTING to the 'seepage'
making the entire outlying area BEYOND the ES...
wet and MOAR unstable.

That's why they're 'plugging it' with bags-o-rock.
They're PLUGGING A DRAIN.

Anybody else get this?

bombshell

they knew for years and theres other dams rated as at risk.

[link to www.nbcbayarea.com]

I used to work in a military capacity of emergency response - what I learned is you don't wait on others to make decisions for you and get the word out to you about if you should get outta dodge. You make the best analysis you can and you get out.
Basically if you are in a situation where you are watching the news and trying to make a decision based on what you are being told you are already behind the ball on what you should be doing. If the discussion starts, even starts - get out - pack and get out.

You can see that officials are too busy not knowing what to do and covering their butts - later it will be the blame game - but do you put your own life and well being in their hands - oh hell no.

-4' in 12 hours.

That would be 6.25 days to get to the "-50'" magic number the DWR has given.

The have maybe 3 days max before inflow overtakes outflow.

Do the math. It's going to Overtop the ES by Friday

I'm not seeing any bedrock under there. That's unfortunate..

They were pumping cement into the hole with water in it earlier..

Who knows what the waters will dredge up?

maybe dinosaur bones, that whole area has them

Ok....stand in front of a car moving at 30 mph...see if you stand there ?

Is the park cam entirely black for anyone else? [link to www.parks.ca.gov (secure)]

Thanks in advance.

Geology.
Water chooses the easiest route.

If you can fill the hole, the water chooses the spillway.

I will be a race between the water riding and filling the void in the spillway.

I have no doubt we will see 5 helicopters dropping material in that hole, while a concrete batch plant makes hot concrete that cures in 1-2 hours, to fill the voids.
All this must be coordinated and completed within 48 hours.

A challenging task, but very possible, once you have the equipment on site and able to transport the material and make the hot concrete.

Right now I'm sure they are assembling the batch plant and gathering the rock.

Its not going under the parking lot, due to the size of the hole and material moved it has found its way to the other side of the dam and out to the river!

Main #OrovilleSpillway flowing at 100,000 cfs. Lake levels down to 894’ feet. Crews working to fill erosion on the emergency spillway.
[link to twitter.com (secure)]

.

8 feet down since the evacuation. They'll need at least 5 more days to hit the 'safe spot' of 850.

You forgot to add in Lake Shasta. It has to drain sometime.

Any process control engineer has had to calculate Proportional Integral Derivative systems.
That's how much in, how much out, and over what time base of ability to control by given means.
This is referred to as a PID loop.
Thus is a major fail on the part of management to not recognize that this is an El Niño year, and not having the spill-way full open since October.

Oh, but engineering isn't cool.. let's talk about f'n feelings.....

The whole emergency spill-way is now jelly-like from overflow and backwash.

The entire overflow spill-way should have been concrete with half inch steel welded plate on top.

There are many photos of what Sacramento looks like when the rain has its way.

If flow begins under part of the human-created structure, Sacramento needs canoes.

Merced will have beachfront properties.

I have been away for a while so don't know if anyone asked this already but how come there are no lights on the dam tonight? I can see cars moving but nothing else.

I for one am a firm believer in meaningful coincidences...

The

The point that we have been trying to make, for days on end, is that, A)the Emergency Spillway(ES) is not an "auxiliary spillway"(not pointing a finger at you, I'm just sayin) & B)though it may seem trivial or a matter of semantics, they don't "use the ES" as the vast majority of people think of when they hear that phrase. It's not a valve they can turn or a door/gate that can be "opened to allow water to flow out". The ES is a static portion of the dam, as I understand it(& I have no doubt as to the speed with which I will be corrected if I'm mistaken on any point here LOL), & is part of the structural design to allow water to escape when power plant & spillway are unable to keep up with the inflow. People seem, all to often, to be of the mistaken impression that it's another control point which can be utilized to help control the reservoir level. It's simply the designed low point of the damn to allow water to overtop the dam, rather to continue to accumulate in the reservoir & threaten the structural integrity of the dam itself, a built-in "failsafe"(Oh the irony) to allow water & thus enormous amounts of pressure, to be relieved(again, as I understand things).

Sorry if I am telling you what you already know but it's clearly something which is a point of confusion/contention over the last few days & hopefully I didn't have any significant errors in my comment. I'm not an expert in the field & don't want to share false/bad info. Just thought I'd take a stab at trying to help clear things up a little bit.

I see a couple little lights flashing. IT looks to be pointed up over the dam right now..

just saw something with a light fly by..

i went on and it was completely black except for a light trailing from right to left in the middle of the screen, could have been headlights on a road. not sure where the cam is looking at.

50÷7.46 Total Feet 24 hours
= 6.7024128686

Latest Stats for water level Oroville Dam;

02/13/2017 –7:00pm 893.49

[link to rdcfeeds.redding.com]

park feed is completely black. haven't seen this before.

[link to www.parks.ca.gov (secure)]

what happened to the dam lights???