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

The 1 km resolution GOES-17 satellite, meso sector #1 is focused on NorCal today

[link to weather.cod.edu (secure)]

bimp fer luv

pray fer Orovillagers

you see that channel formed by the jet stream withh all the “popcorn” clouds? Yeah, that’s called an atmospheric river, and thats really bad. It’s essentialky a planetary water cannon pointed at Oroville.


Global warming is bullshit, we’re entering ive age.

Anyone else seeing those leaks increase in size? On the mainspillway.

The run off looks much thicker and wider.

[link to www.parks.ca.gov]


The small streams to the right. They look fuller then what I recall.

Anyone have any screen shot or saved image to compare?

Last Edited by Nonentity on 05/16/2019 10:31 AM

The FIRST WAVE of the Rain Event dropped 1.58" of rain on the reservoir itself, the watershed - which is UPHILL from the dam - could have received more, or LESS rain during this FIRST Wave of the Rain Event. (some of the weather projections actually have MORE rain falling in the valley going up towards Oregon for this Rain Event than up in the Sierras in the watershed - others are just the opposite though)

As noted in my posts yesterday my calculations indicated that the reservoir should be able to absorb a 3" watershed rain event. Much of the first inch of that rain will be absorbed by the soil and NOT run off ... AND ... of course it takes quite a while for water to run downhill from the watershed into Lake Oroville, so we won't know how much the lake will actually rise from this First Rain Event for about 36 hours.

IF the FIRST rain event fills the remaining storage space by 1/2 then we can adjust our anticipated rise accordingly for the Second and Third Rain Events (IF THEY HAPPEN) (since the FIRST Rain Event should NOT raise the lake that much due to the dry soil absorption of rain).

LESS than 3" of rain (average over the entire watershed) and the Lake "may" not hit the magic 900' level. IF there is a larger rain event, say 5" or so (average over the entire watershed), well imo they are going to have to spill water out of the Oroville Lake one way or the other ... either by the Main Spillway or by the Emergency Spillway.

I guess now we sit back and wait. We need to see how high the water flows become from this first rain event. How much those water flows raise the lake. And see what nature has in store over the next week wrt FUTURE Rain Events.

From where I sit, 2000 or so miles away, it looks like the Lake is going to fill to the brim ... and then we will see what the DWR does, and how whichever spillway they decide to use reacts.

OH ... they were doing a BUNCH of digging with some equipment last night on the NORTH side of the gate structure just west of the access road to the gate structure, just outside the Main Spillway channel. You have to wonder why they were out there digging IN THE HEAVY RAIN ... AT NIGHT ... ??

Cheers to all ... and hoping that there are NO future rain events for the watershed for the month of May.

Last Edited by Midwest Skeptic on 05/16/2019 10:40 AM

This post was mentioned today on a "verboten" site.
Urban Survival dot com

Did any one watch or figure out what they were doing last night?

they are still trying to shore up just as I stated sometime ago... Its not going to work.

And the inflow is now quite UP.. over 20,000 again.

Looks like it's still slowly rising

What is a doomy inflow number?

The gates do appear to be leaking much more today rhan they did Monday.

DWR: “Sacramento, we’ve got a problem”...

889.50^

890^^!!!!

ruh roh

Oratards we RIDE!!

Current rate of rise appears to be about .05 inch per hour
1.2” per day of the storm Looks like we might be ok even if the storm goes for the forecasted 10 days....

Prolly not gonna make 9 hundy guys...

Doom is OFF the menu boys!

There’s always next year, CA Demoshits and DWR incompetence have another year to waste money on this boondoggle and make the crisis even worse next winter....

Then again, they only pretend to fail....

Rough math, 901 in 8 days at current in/out numbers.

I suppose 160k CFS would top the ES in 24 hours.

But I remind, rough math. Wide margin of error.

Yeah but,

Not the flow from gates. The size, width and number of smaller streams to the right of gate water flow.

Last Edited by Nonentity on 05/16/2019 11:33 AM

We’ll need to see the levation go up by more than 1/2” PER HOUR to get anywhere near the 9 hundy elevation we need for catastrophic faulure....

No Doom

Can anyone iffer an explanation as to why it was necessary to run a backhoe all night last night in the rain at the bottom of the dam?

Doesnt seem prudent to be digging holes in the base a dirt berm holding back a tectiliion hactares of agua...in a storm

Hope I'm wrong. here it is as I'm seeing it ( barring an increase in outflow) :

In about three hours Oroville Dam water height will be at 890'.

In three hours the rise in feet/hour will be at 1/10th'/hour based on current increases in 'res ele feet' progression; increases today, May 16 0:00 till now: .03,.01,.04, .04, .05, .06, .07. IMO at 10:00 PDT based on increases in '/hour inflow stats we should be near 1/10th' rise/hour (.10').

That's aproximately a 2.5'/day rise in water level starting in three hours (24 times .1'/hr') .

It'll get larger ('rise/day) due to: more direct precipitation, peaking rain run off, snow melt. 2.4' rise/day at 10:00 PDT and increasing due to direct precipitation, old run off peaking, plus more current runoff, snow melt.

Based on Millie Kay's recent video 'Reservoirs Above Oroville Dam' the Upper Feather Watershed into Oroville Lake runoff mostly (95%) comes from the North Fork and Middle Fork which do collect water from heavily snow packed areas. 9:00 in the below linked utube video she discusses this area with pics and maps.

Assuming no increase in outflow; in my opinion we gots max 4 days and probably around 3 days until 900'.

On the tropicaltidbits link hit 'global' tab and then 'gfs' tab to reset the gfs weather prediction map to current day ( May 16). [link to www.tropicaltidbits.com (secure)]

Here's today's outflows: [link to cdec.water.ca.gov]

[youtube] [link to youtu.be (secure)]

Not even close, the first round of rain fell on dry soil and most of it was absorbed. The next rounds will all flow into oroville at much higher rates.

What was the MS doing when the lake was that high?

Where did they take the level too after? Why?


These are good questions

If I drive to the dam tomorrow morning, what would you guys like to see?

..WHUT HAPPENED MAN?..I MISSED P. 1111..WHOO HOO..
I SAW THE SERIOUS LINES OF RAINS COMIN AN..I JUS' PASSED OUT FROM ALL THE OROVILLE DISASTER-NATION DHOOMNESS...I..TOOK TOO MUCH, MAHN...

Those who called the shots to put us where we are, their families move to Oroville for an all expenses paid 30 day vacation below the dam.

Let's see how fast they tell the truth when it effects their loved ones.

It all comes down to how much rain occurs in the Watershed with the second and third rain event.

If the follow up storms AVOID the watershed ... well they may make it, not having to have water flow down one of the two spillways, BUT it doesn't look like that will happen.

IF the Lake gets filled up, and more water is coming in ... THEN we will get to see just how well one, or both, of those rebuilt spillways actually work.

There is also the wildcard of water from the lake flowing UNDER the spillway gate structure and/or weir. IS that happening? Is that why they were digging last night to try to determine if that is happening and if so HOW MUCH?

The California DWS is not only incompetent but we already know it LIES, and doesn't think twice about LYING, so those of us on the outside can only speculate as to what is REALLY going on. Even their "public face" PR person is probably kept totally in the dark about what is really happening so anything they say has to be severely discounted.

CONGRATS!

WE HAD COMPETITION?..WAS IT THE 1000 PAGES ONE?...

Simple, they were using the spillway at the time to maintain that level, just like every other year for the past 50 years. They have never let the lake get this high under these conditions when they were not using the main spillway...