Last week, I said that up to a foot of rain could be seen in the Lake Oroville watershed due to a series of “supersoaker storms” coming through. Now, the largest of the storms is bearing down. Dr. Ryan Maue of WeatherBell says there’s going to be an unbelievable “10 trillion gallons” in the next 7 days as more storms come through.
Excessive rainfall on way to California 4 to 10 inches of rain along coast from Santa Cruz north … same for mountains above Oroville. –Dr. Ryan Maue on Twitter
Result in California over next 7-days is widespread heavy rain … 5″+ along coast up to 10-12″ at elevation. All told, 10 Trillion gallons –Dr. Ryan Maue on Twitter
Atmospheric moisture well above normal (150-200%) w/plume to landfall California but look at center of North America (250-400%) spring-like –Dr. Ryan Maue on Twitter
I wonder how much gold this little event has sluiced out?
For California, this is au naturale hydraulic mining.
Wash. Rinse. Wait for the next Pineapple Express…. and repeat!
The muck they are digging out of the back eddy between the main ruptured spillway flow and the turbine flow channels might be worth ‘panning’ or running through a sluice box….
Lottsa opportunities further down stream for amateur action in the gravel bars, when the flows drop back to safer levels. Any locations where water flows across nearly flat bedrock with cracks cross flow would also be worth working… by suctioning out anything that collected in the cracks and running it through a sluice/riffle box.
The waters downstream are too deep. I plan on working the upper reaches of the Feather River system, where there is less overburden. The banks of streams and creeks will be the most productive using a metal detector. I would love to stick my dredge in the river, but the state has been holding back on the issuance of the permits despite a favorable ruling one year ago from the judge hearing the 6 year old case on the moratorium. Some dredgers take the risk of dredging anyway.
How many rivers of rain has it taken to over spill in the first place?
This current event sounds like at least as much. Plus it is full.
Perhaps they should cut a hole in the emergency spillway now in anticipation to reduce damage.
Don Pedro in Tuollumne county will be full by Tuesday, when it’s spillway will come into use. Hope it holds up better than Oroville!
Bunch of Wimps, it’s normal weather for Snowdonia and large parts of Wales 🙂
Even if the emergency spillway is entirely compromised and washes away…. It’s not going to do much except for some localized flooding…… As long as it doesn’t Surge.
Assuming that the main spillway won’t be able to be used at is full rated flow…They are probably better off breaking up the emergency spill way and just letting it spill through a controlled gap closer to the main spillway side. It’s not going to compromise the main structure of the dam. Better off letting it spill in a controlled manner than as a surge.
Anyway, better minds than mine are working on it I suppose.
Peak water?
http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-dam-truth-climate-change-means-more-lake-orovilles/
“California’s climate has always been extreme (even before humans got seriously involved), but what’s happening right now is just ridiculous. We are witnessing the effects of climate change play out, in real time.”
“Climate science and basic physics suggest we are already seeing a shift in the delicate rainfall patterns of the West Coast. A key to understanding how California’s rainy season is changing lies in understanding what meteorologists call “atmospheric rivers,” thin, intense ribbons of moisture that stream northeastward from the tropical Pacific Ocean and provide California with up to half of its annual rainfall. Exactly how atmospheric rivers will change depends on greenhouse gas emissions and science that’s still being worked out.
Atmospheric rivers are already responsible for roughly 80 percent of California’s flooding events — including the one at Lake Oroville — and there’s reason to believe they are changing in character. Since warmer air can hold more water vapor, atmospheric rivers in a warming climate are expected to become more intense, bringing perhaps a doubling or tripling in frequency of heavy downpours. What’s more, as temperatures increase, more moisture will fall as rain instead of snow, increasing the pressure on dams and waterways during the peak of the rainy season. There’s even new evidence that especially warm atmospheric rivers can erode away existing snowpack.”
Oh bollocks. The great flood of 1862 needs to be explained before they can even begin to consider calling what’s currently happening climate change. Same goes for droughts. They can’t explain why California has experienced drought that lasted for centuries.
After 40 years green science –
“Exactly how atmospheric rivers will change depends on greenhouse gas emissions
and science that’s still being worked out.”
____________________________________________
Gold at the end of the rainbow!
Griff, a warmer atmosphere holds more water, not releases more.
Don’t try to explain reality to the Griff. It just makes him mad.
If Griffies world, if it hasn’t happened in the last 10 years, then it’s proof that CO2 is going to kill us all.
griff quotes cli scis “and basic physics suggest… the delicate rainfall patterns of the West Coast.” After I got up off the floor laughing at the “delicate” west coast rainfall pattern (the sure sign that an enviro activist is speaking, when nature is “delicate”), a pattern repeated so many times in recorded history (and geo history) as to debunk any human cause, after I caught my breath, I wondered, how does basic physics “suggest” something to these cli scis? A voice in their head? Seems like just last month cli scis and “basic physics” were suggesting more drought. Maybe those voices are confusing them, griff?
Delicate ! OMG ! That is funny.
Grist? Ha ha ha! You kidder, you!
Ten trillion gallons! We seem to be adopting the alarmist metrics – remember the number of olympic swimming pools worth of water melted from Greenland. I see attempts to get a handle on the amount. Well how about this one: The sun is 15 trillion centimetres from earth; a gallon jug is ~30cm high, so 7.5 trillion gallon jugs end to end would reach the sun and back!
Talking about ten trillion gallons is quite meaningless. How do these people know it’s ten trillion rather than 15 or twenty?. And how can any of us relate to trillions of gallons at all? Let’s keep to inches of rain fall, we have all learned to understand inches as it relates to previous rain volume, and therefore gives us a far better picture of the scale of the deluge.
1.32 quadrillion fluid ounces.
Fourty trillion quarts!
Nota bene and FYI
MESOSCALE PRECIPITATION DISCUSSION 0060
NWS WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER COLLEGE PARK MD
450 AM EST MON FEB 20 2017
AREAS AFFECTED…CA COAST…SACRAMENTO VALLEY…SIERRA-NEVADA
FOOTHILLS
CONCERNING…HEAVY RAINFALL…FLASH FLOODING POSSIBLE
VALID 0947Z – 1800Z
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/metwatch/metwatch_mpd_multi.php?md=0060&yr=2017
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/metwatch/images/mcd0060.gif
https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/gcd.html
(Last Updated: February 16, 2017)
Current Status
The reservoir is declining and will continue to decline until spring runoff begins to enter the reservoir. The current snowpack above Lake Powell is 157% of median.
That’s curious since the very day they updated that, the 16th, Lake Powell inflow started exceeding outflow.
Has ever since.
According to the link they provide on their update.
To view the most current reservoir elevation, content, inflow and release, click on: Lake Powell Data.
https://www.usbr.gov/rsvrWater/rsv40Day.html?siteid=919&reservoirtype=Reservoir
Is this unusual or is it an early spring runoff?
Will Lake Powell and Lake Mean fill as they did in ’83?
Check this out
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-29/magazine/tm-62672_1_hoover-dam
“Yet it was during the summer of 1983 that the Bureau of Reclamation almost lost control of the Colorado River to a rampaging flood.
Normal runoff from the snowpack along the Continental Divide was forecast that year, so Lake Powell, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border, was drawn down only slightly. Hot weather and rain altered the picture, and the actual runoff was 210% of normal.
Two thousand tons of water per second soared from the dam’s two spillways and river outlets. Rumbling noises were heard in early June. Chunks of rocks and pieces of concrete issued from the spillway tunnels, as if the dam was mortally wounded.
Despite the apparent damage, the spillway gates needed to be kept partially open because the reservoir was rising almost six inches a day. Yet water also needed to be contained. Hoover Dam, 402 miles downstream, had safety problems of its own, and releases from Hoover could cause extensive flooding and damage all the way to the Gulf of California, as it eventually did that year.
Top bureau officials met in late June and established a maximum water level of 3,708 feet above sea level for Lake Powell. At 3,708.40 feet, the engineers thought they would lose control of the spillway gates. Four-foot-high plywood sheets were added to the gates. The water rose and lapped over them. The plywood was replaced by eight-foot steel plates. The water still rose.
When engineers inspected the spillway tunnels, they saw that house-sized holes had been punched through the concrete lining and into the sandstone. They thought the sandstone might erode, causing “an uncontrolled release,” according to a memo.
What would then happen was anyone’s guess. A wall of water could have roared through the Grand Canyon and overwhelmed everything in its path, starting with Hoover Dam. The subsequent huge loss of life, property, power and water would have been disastrous.
The level of the reservoir peaked at 3,708.34 feet on July 15, six-hundredths of a foot below the point where officials feared they’d lose control. It held steady for a few days and then gradually declined.”
“…six-hundredths of a foot below the point where officials feared they’d lose control..”, that sounds like a typical Hollywood script where the disaster almost always gets averted with one second left on the clock. Life imitates art.
Water level is currently 52 feet below the Oroville Dam emergency spillway level. Flow rate down the main spillway has been increased slightly to 60,000 CFS and current inflows to the reservoir are still below that rate. Heavier rains this evening and tomorrow will reverse that but the 52 feet of reserve capacity is considered to be safely sufficient. Repair work continues to the emergency spillway and the outflow channel for the electrical turbines discharge water.
It appears they have drained enough to regain their lost flood control capacity.
However, with the rain and everything downstream saturated the continued releases to avoid overflow may require more sever flooding.
I’ve done a lot of reading in recent days. I think that 8 inches of rain in the Oroville watershed will refill the reservoir and cause the emergency spillway to begin emptying. But it might be less than 8 inches, because:
1. Unbeknownst to most observers, including (!) the Oroville managers themselves, Oroville is merely the largest reservoir in a network that feeds into it. In particular, there’s another one (Lake Almanor) that’s one-third the size of Oroville, which makes it a very large one. It’s full, as are all the other upper watershed reservoirs. In the rain the weekend before last, some of the water wound up in their other reservoirs, but not this time.
2. The snowpack is 150%+ of average. It’s already been rained on hard. This increases its water content, and makes it likelier than there’ll be some snowmelt to add to inflows.
The main spillway is badly damaged and can’t be run at more than 70,000 cfs. If the rains are at or above the high end of forecasts, then the emergency spillway will get used again. It’s a passive structure and cannot be closed.
There is some evidence that the rock under the emergency spillway is less solid than thought. If it’s used again, the danger would be that the erosion will migrate backwards, and that the weir will collapse. If that happens, it might not even matter if the dam itself goes, because you’d see the main spillway collapse and join the emergency spillway.
Let’s hope it doesn’t rain as hard as the latest forecasts suggest.
The main spillway should have sloped sides and be routed back and forth across the face of the dam so that in case of emergency it can be used as a water park.
That’s an awesome idea! And part of it should be shaped like a giant spiral and they could raise revenue to fix the dam by selling big inner-tubes at the top.
It would also make a fantastic skateboard run, ending with an invigorating plunge into the Feather River.
The California DWR should consider partnering with Six Flags Entertainment for “Six Flags Dam Wild Recreation!”
The parking lots should be looking like a peg board by now. “Drill baby, drill” would be better than “cry baby, cry”. Summon my personal troll.
Where is the net of reinforcement in the slab ?…I would expect a net of #4 grade 40 each way for this era of construction.
Concrete is designed as a cracked section, it doesn’t have any tensile capacity beyond a strain of 0.003. It can only be held together by the tensile strength of the steel reinforcement. It is arrogant and untowards to assume no tension in any concrete located in any seismic zone. Why no reinforcement? I can’t get a permit for a residential garage slab without reinforcement. Why no reinforcement?
It did have reinforcement, grade 60 according to the design reports.
The rebar would be dangling out of the broken sections of concrete and visable……
Barkey: There are photographs where it shows, you have to get to a close up to see it.
Slabs on grade can be designed with or without reinforcing. Most that I do are without. The reinforcing has to be supported to hold it in place in the slab, or it winds up on the base at the bottom of the slab where it does no good. But in order for the standees to have enough strength to hold the reinforcing up in the slab as the slab is placed, the base has to very firm. But if the base is firm enough to support the point load of the standees, it is also firm enough to support the distributed load of the un-reinforced concrete.
Northern California 8 station precipitation chart:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_ESI.pdf
California reservoir map:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reservoir_map.html
Interactive map:
“There are 1,404 dams in California, ranging from six-foot structures damming small creeks, to the towering Oroville Dam, at 742 feet the tallest in the country (Yes, Oroville is taller than Shasta and Hoover Dams).” Ref:
http://www.kqed.org/news/science/climatewatch/waterandpower/map.jsp
Griff and CAGW love the line: “There’s reason to believe….”
Bucknell Engineers to Examine Oroville Dam Emergency
http://www.bucknell.edu/news-and-media/events-and-calendars/2017/bucknell-engineers-to-examine-oroville-dam-emergency.html
Oroville Dam update, Monday 20 Feb. New details…
https://youtu.be/Z0Ij7cD2C8Y
Lovin the snazzy new biblical end-times sounding term RIVERS IN THE SKY is trending in the news with its insidious AGW tie in. When you expect to be SMITTEN by an ATMOSPHERIC RIVER, fall to your knees and ATONE FOR YOUR SINS TO BE SPARED THE WORST OF GOD’S WRATH.
Meanwhile… the decades-old term used by California weather presenters that describes this specific phenomenon PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is falling into disuse because frankly, it sounds way too cute and casual for these end times. Grab your coat Marge, it’s just another naturally recurring weather event. When we expected a visit from the Pineapple Express, it was just rain and you could even wave at it when it went by, like fearless people greeting a train or trying to communicate with cows.
AND THE END-TIMES WINNER IS…
Giant ‘Rivers in the Sky’ Could Cause Vast, Extinction-Level Floods
9:00am Tuesday updates: Water discharge on the main spillway continues at 60,000cfs. Oroville Lake level rose just 2 feet overnight, to 852 feet. Rock, aggregate, and cement slurry continue to be placed 24 hours a day into areas affected by erosion on the emergency spillway.
To be fair to the California Water officials, who have earned plenty of grief for having not maintained the primary spillway, they have succeeded in making the situation much better.
The significant lowering of the lake level and successful strengthening of the emergency spillway has greatly reduced the chances for a catastrophic event. If the primary spillway erosion does not escalate into something disastrous.
Additional flooding seems likely downstream as continued rain events and release add to the wet year and coming spring runoff.
From a broader view of all things west and wet considered I see a strong potential for a repeat of 82-83 when all things filled up providing abundant water for every use.
The Anti-Drought may be the new Westworld.
One dominos start to fall…
The “bedrock” that some claim will stop the collapse, isn’t as good a rock as we were led to believe.
The likelihood of a partial failure is extremely high
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Can YOU say Liquifaction boys and girls? I think that you can!
I can say liquifaction. I can also say that liquifaction is extremely unlikely given the geology.
Re: geology, liquifaction is perhaps the most dramatic way for landslides to occur on melange hillsides of alluvial sand like those of South California’s St Francis dam outburst flood, however the more complex geology of Oroville doesn’t preclude similarly dramatic landslides occurring by slips and slumps along fault bounderies between the variety of rock types at that site. Chemical weathering isn’t only a surface phenomenon (as E.M.Smith contends elsewhere in the thread) it can occur where water and air can penetrate along deeper fissures created by faulting over millenia. The 1951 “Report on Feasibility of Feather River Project” by California State Water Resources Board
https://books.google.com/books?id=wiM3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA40
notes: “Just upstream from the proposed axis the high rock line along the channel drops sharpple. There are also indications of more pronounced jointing and deeper weathering. This is undoubtedly due to some structural control not as yet evident. Also there appears to be some structural feature striking diagonally downstream from right to left abutment from point upstream from axis on right abutment to a point on axis on left abutment at about elevation 300. In may represent a shear of closely spaced joints or a difference in rock type but it should be thoroughly explored as it cuts through left abutment under the proposed structure.”
and a Metabunk member posted map excerpts documenting a geological feature labelled “fault line” that runs diagonally under the spillway, see here
https://www.metabunk.org/oroville-dam-spillway-failure.t8381/page-33#post-202044
For those interested in the nitty gritty and enjoy great photography, RocDocTravel has posted recently on this topic here:
http://www.rocdoctravel.com/2017/02/california-landslides-floods.html
sorry, my bad, that map label I referred to should have read “Ravine fault”
That fault shown in the map is nowhere near the dam or either spillway. The symbol the commenter was referring to is a strike and dip indicator, not a fault.