The Lake Oroville saga continues, yesterday we wondered if the collapse of the spillway might have been due to missing or substandard REBAR, and many experts weighed it on that topic. It now appears that there was REBAR there, and the failure was likely of a nature of lack of maintenance and age combined. It appears the earth underneath the spillway was compromised, and that led to the collapse of the structure without anything to support it.
Today, it is a race against time and water, as DWR has ramped up outflow to 65,000 cubic feet per second, and in doing so, is sacrificing the damaged spillway in hopes that there will not be an uncontrolled release from the emergency spillway, something that has never happened in the history of the dam. During the super El Niño of 1997-1998, it came within 1 foot of the emergence spillway. Now, given the fact that inflow is still exceeding outflow, and emergency release looks very likely.
Here’s video from yesterday showing the damage and concrete blowing out:
Unfortunately, the last update of data at 11:00AM PST today shows a water surface elevation value of 895.84 feet, or 4.16 feet to the top at the 900 foot mark where the emergency spillway starts to kick in.
The rate of rise has slowed from yesterday, and no new additional rain is expected today, but with afternoon temperatures expected to be above freezing well above 4000 feet, we are going to see snow-meltwater continue to flow in. As of 11 AM, they were letting out 65,029 CFS, but have a staggering inflow of 132,107 CFS, more than double the release rate:
Source: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?ORO
What’s more worrying is this graph comparing the 1997/98 super El Niño year to this year:
They’ve got a hockey-stick of storage going on, and much earlier in the water year than 1997/98…and they have a busted spillway.
We’ll update this story as more is known.
Here is a historical video for perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF4ToIhKEeI
UPDATE1: about an hour ago, officals say they “think” they can avoid the emergency spillway:
OROVILLE
With a break in the weather and increased outflow from Oroville Dam’s heavily damaged spillway, state officials said Friday morning they no longer believe the swollen reservoir will breach the dam’s emergency spillway.
After a grim assessment late Thursday, officials announced Friday morning they think they can avoid using the dam’s emergency spillway, which they’ve been working feverishly to avoid. The emergency structure feeds into an unlined ravine, and the water would propel soil, trees and other debris into the Feather River.
The announcement came after William Croyle, director of the state Department of Water Resources, told reporters Thursday evening that water levels in Lake Oroville could reach the brim sometime Saturday, forcing activation of the emergency spillway. The emergency system, which has never been used, would dump water onto an exposed hillside, dislodging trees and earthen debris into the Feather River and potentially affect communities downstream.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article131743014.html#storylink=cpy
UPDATE2:
As of 11PM on 2/10/17, Lake Oroville is now less than a foot from the top and overflow on to the emergency spillway.
Update 3: Oroville water level tops 900 feet, water will start flowing down spillway
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re: “As of 11 AM, they were letting out 65,029 CFS, but have a staggering inflow of 132,107 CFS, more than double the release rate:”
According to the short documentary I posted earlier (The Birth of he Oroville Dam) at the end of the other thread, the maximum discharge rate upon opening the (IIRC) eight 30 foot ‘gates’ is on the order of 250,000 CFS …
I see the problem. The water runs down the spillway and clearly circles around back to the reservoir (a la M. C. Escher).
They will probably sacrifice the spillway to save the dam…breaching an earthen dam can be fatal for the dam….it’s too dangerous to have no freeboard on an earthen dam. The outlet penstocks won’t be able to draw down the reservoir level very quickly. Another large storm may exceed the spillway capacity. That would mean the dam breaches.
re: “They will probably sacrifice the spillway to save the dam”
Ah, um, uh, there is that other ‘thing’ that acts as a safety overflow that will begin ‘passing water’ when the ‘pond’ reaches about the 901 foot level …
Fail-safe.
Getting closer than anyone dared envision.
Well, u.k.(us), they can open the ‘sluice gates’ a lot wider it appears, upwards of 250,000 CFS worth. At 135,000 CFS present release rate they are only a little over half way there!
Holy heck, both I-80 and US-50 closed today due to mudslides and downed trees.
What a crazy few weeks.
Should add that both of those are eastbound main arteries out of Sacramento towards NV.
80 goes north of Tahoe, 50 just along the south side of the lake.
On highway 17 there have been several slide including one big one that occurred about the time spillway was damaged. While crews were working on clearing the slide to reopen highway 17, A section of highway 37 “dissappeared”. A large part of the hill slide away taking the road with it. They may have to build a bridge to fix it. A nearby reservoir was undergoing modification to address earthquake concerns and is currently the lake has a 50% fill limit imposed. Right now the lake is at 90% with the spillway open.
All across the state there are slides, rockfalls, and other damage occurring the reads. I suspect the Oroville damage was due to a slide that no visual inspection would have pewsixrws ir.
Why not have people come in with bottles to take some water away?
Easy. There are communities in CA where you can be fined for collecting rainwater….on your own property.
Best check with Central Planning first, unless you know a party member.
Maybe Soros will offer to pay a dime a bottle?
That’d be more useful than paying others to incite the minions to break stuff.
The weather cleared enough for some really nice footage from a newscopter today.
http://www.kcra.com/article/livecopter-3-flies-over-waterfall-like-oroville-dam-spillway/8730394
Another Sultan Sea in the making? Gotta had it to those Cal Engineers!
No doubt Jerry Gov Moonbeam will be blaming the situation on …. TA DA … Anthropogenic Global Human Warming and saying … “We will build our own Phuck’n Damn!” … upon which a Cal EPA attorney will tap Jerry on the shoulder and say … “No no NoOOoo”.
Ha ha
There may be an interesting side effect to this event. We live about 5 miles from the Canyon Lake Dam and spillway in Texas. In 2002, a major month long rain event nearly wiped out the spillway here. The result, though, is a mile long walkway through 110 million years of geologic history. There are occasional public tours which start out at the top which is present day. As you progress down through the spillway, the geologic history of the Balcones Escarpment is exposed, terminating at the bottom, 110 million years earlier. It is a quite interesting tour.
Its also a nice lake to sail on during a light summer breeze.
“Climate change will lead to more dry years, more wet years, and more average years”
Wikipedia California Drought
Did a prankster sneak that in or what.
Now when will the MSM which still supplies millions with their news go back and review stories of “endless drought”
The alarmists are so illeducated and brainwashed they probably see nothing wrong with that statement.
Reminds me of the UK Met Office.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/1/21/a-copy-of-that-cold-winter-forecast.html
Well, what do you think, it is a true statement!
If there have been until now x, y and z years for the 3 cases mentioned, there will be x+a, x+b and x+c years sometime in the future in a+b+c years…. Easy provable…
Math is great until you include the six W’s:
Who, What, Why, When, Where, and hoW. Then it gets sticky.
That’s a hoot! It’s one of the few things they can say that I agree with! Unfortunately, it says absolutely nothing, as even without climate change those things will happen. But the climate is changing (as it always has), so there is nothing to argue about. And there will be more dry years, more wet years, and more average years. This guy must be a politician. Or a lawyer. Maybe both.
All signs point to an epic year of potentially biblical floods in california.
Mostly it’s the earliness of the accumulations.
The earliness of the Oroville reservoir near filling is significant.
The prior near filling was 82-83 water year when the filling did not happen until June 1st.
see here: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=ORO
Imagine the potential for the enormity of snow/water accumulation ahead as the rest of February and all of March, April and May are added to the current abundance.
I recently asked the California Department of Water Resources about how rare the earliness of the snow/water equivalency accumulation is.
MY INQUIRY::
I see that the current status is reported in two ways. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/snowapp/sweq.action
% of April 1 Average / % of Normal for This Date
STATE Data as of February 2, 2017
Average snow water equivalent (Inches)
Percent of April 1 Average (%) 109
Percent of normal for this date (%) 173
I wonder how early this accumulation is?
Or rather how unusual or rare is it to have 109% of April at the beginning of February.
Is this amount, at this early time remarkable? Is so how much so?
There must be data to determine the significance.
With 2 more months of routine, potential & likely additional accumulation I would be interested in knowing how significant the current 109% of April 1st Average is.
THEIR REPLY:
Hi Steve
Such high readings (snowpack water content) this early in the season are significant, but not unprecedented. See the highest and lowest February 1 readings below (since 1950). Obviously, weather conditions in California vary greatly – not only from year to year, but from day to day. So the snowpack that normally provides about a third of the water we use in California is off to a great start, but we have to keep in mind that our weather can turn from wet to dry on a dime. It’s too early to know where we will stand come spring when the wet season is behind us.
I hope this helps,
Ted
Highest snowpack water content as a percentage of February 1 average:
1952 267%
1969 230%
1995 207%
1993 200%
1956 193%
Lowest snowpack water content as a percentage of February 1 average:
2014 14%
1963 21%
1991 21%
1976 22%
2015 23%
1977 25%
According to news report, they are going to dial down the spillway release a bit because it’s so damaged they now fear undermining the power transmission line towers, even though they removed the wires yesterday and today.
This means they say that there still may be water going over the emergency spillway in the next day.
I was just looking at the dam web site and they indeed did cut the outflow to 55000 CFS at 8 PM. Inflow is decreasing slowly but remains above 100000 CFS. Distance to the uncontrolled spillway is down to 1.4 feet.
If this data is accurate, the spillway will start flowing in about 4 hours.
In August of 1975 there was an earthquake near the Oroville dam. Rapid emptying and filling to allow repairs to the generators were implicated in the earthquake. What will rapid filling from nearly empty do today ????
Where’s my $100 from each of you who insisted there was no rebar? Pay up, suckas.
A timely reminder of Nature’s power, and what large energy storage systems can do when there is a fault.
899.44 ft. at midnight. For the last 8 hours, the water level has risen at a nearly linear rate of about 0.27 ft/hr. It seems unavoidable now. The spillway will be topped by 3 a.m. PST
Adding insult to injury, it looks like the dam got a little more rain (0.16″) this evening.
Nope. It will flood the emergency spillway…. They’ll have to slow the water in the other spillway otherwise they are going to have a gorge there. That water will be just eroding the hillside.
-Cavitation as round propellers.
Can bee avoided if air is present -suck it in!
Where’s the live feed of the webcam on the emergency spillway?
=============
I’m estimating the emergency spillway will be breached around 8 a.m. PST. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/02/lake-oroville-100-full-emergency-spillway-use-hours-away/
What is the true height of the emergency spillway? The reported water level passed 900 ft. 3 hours ago. Up to 900.72 at this hour.
emergency spillway is at 901 ft.
Is the lip of the “emergency spillway” reinforced or will erosion start almost immediately, reducing the spill level of lake below 900ft?
Lake level is now 901.24 ft. Anyone on site to report?
Lake level can stack up a little higher than the height of the lip on the em. spillway. There is a step in the water head just behind a barrage which determines the volume of water which can flow over the barrier.
Lake level is now 902.02 ft. It has been rising at a rate of 1.5″ per hour today.
The wier at the top,of the emergency spillway is very thick reinforced concrete. The erosion problem is the hillside below. There are gullies, so it won’t be pretty.
It is quite interesti g that their prime concern in using the “emergency spillway” (code for “low point other than the dam wall”) is the soil it will wash into the river below.
Seems to be plenty of soil already being washed into there from the non-emergency spillway.
the concrete spillway is basically washed down to bedrock now. The emergency spillway has a huge amount of soil that will be washed into the Feather River.
I not sure how to link but tacomacospotter has this pic of emergency spillway in use.
:large
https://t.co/HHM8uTdK10
The gravel from that soil will settle in the channel of the river downstream of the dam, reducing the capacity of that channel, making any local flooding worse. As there is a low head dam just downstream that gravel will not be able to move farther downstream. In a natural channel the gravel would eventually spread along the channel to little future effect. With it prevented from moving it will have to be removed to restore the capacity of that channel.
as long as inflow exceeds outflow, the emergency spillway will release water and the lake level should not get much above 901 ft. The flow down the emergency spillway looks like it could hit 30-40,000 cfs, which can be compared to the 55,000 cfs the concrete spillway has been handling overnight. That will cause a lot of erosion.
Well their rosy projections have turned out to be bunk if this is correct. Says they had to shut down use of the primary spillway due to erosion of the earthen bank supporting the dam. So the emergency spillway will have to be used and their already working on clearing what vegetation they can while they can. This guy also claims there is a lot more water coming than what I had read about before. It is now a real emergency it seems moving towards a possible disaster.
They’ve been clearing vegetation and other possible large debris objects since Wednesday.
They’ve also been spraying cement onto the bed of arranged boulders along the emergency spillway.
They also removed the transmission wires from the towers. Looks like they followed recommended protocol as soon as the numbers became obvious.
This is fascinating.
Too senationalist to be entirely credible.
“spillway is unuseable” ???
Right, so where is 65000 CFS of water going now, if it is “unusable”. Typical youtube BS merchant.
Emergency Spillway now taking water.
http://www.kcra.com/nowcast.
Aerial video starts about 1hr.17min. in above link.
Just saw water start coming over the emergency spillway as of 8 am from a KCRA Livecopter shot.
This shows virtually the whole valley under a flood alert http://www.kcra.com/alerts