Posted on 02/12/2017 9:36:04 PM PST by Kartographer
The '55 flood was a major part of my family history growing up. In '55 my dad was stacking sandbags at a place called Shanghai Bend just south of Yuba City. The levy let go about 200 yards downstream from where he was. A couple of guys on his crew were lost and he only made it out by hanging on to the hood of a jeep that was carrying about 20 men. How you get 20 men on a jeep I don't know but they managed. My mom was six months pregnant with me and spent the flood at my grandparent's house between Live Oak and Yuba City. There was water all around but it never got above the floor boards.
I remember the Christmas '64 flood. We opened presents in a tent beside a road in the Sutter Buttes that year. Our house never got wet though.
My dad and uncles worked on the dam and the project off and on during the '60s. The project, that sent irrigation water to LA and taxed Northern California residents to help pay for it, was not popular in that part of the state in those days. The one thing they always said though wqs "at least the river will never flood again." Guess that doesn't hold anymore.
I've always had great respect for the Feather river and recommend everyone living near it have the same. Our prayers are with you.
The main spillway is between the dam and the emergency spillway. The main used to be a rectangular concrete channel. Part of that failed and the high energy water flow did the rest. They can suffer much more erosion below the emergency spillway without too much concern. Much more along the dam side of the main and it could start to soften the base of the dam. Maybe even remove enough material to not have enough weight to withstand the pressure. My guess is they’ll let the main run as much as they can, but once it gets maybe 1/3 closers to the damn they’ll cut way back. The emergency spillway will have to take the rest. If the rains are as bad as predicted, I’ll say 60 to 75% chance they lose the spillway wall and 20 ft of Lake plus the new rain.
You are so right. We are not applying the flood control bond funds that California voted for but we are blowing billions a year on the insane train to nowhere thanks to our idiot governor. And, yes, the infrastructure is deteriorating, like the tracks in Elk Grove, because infrastructure doesn't vote. Left-wing left-coast elites, CTA lobbyists, community organizers, lazy state employees, prison guards, crazy environmentalists, handout queens, and illegals do vote and override the needs of the state as a whole and specifically the needs of the conservative counties. And that's because democrat politicians don't mind screwing up California's future as a whole state so long as they can featherbed their future by shoving state money at the special interest and grievance industry groups that will give them $1M/year do-nothing jobs once they term out.
And guess what they will do after this to cater even more strongly to the environmentalist wacko vote? They will not say that we need more upstream storage and shore up existing facilities to improve flood control and align our storage capacities and demand to the 5-6 year demonstrated wet-dry cycle. No, they will say that, see, dams are dangerous; we should tear them all down.
Get out your pans and sluiceways!
This current and turbulence could unearth a new gold rush.
Looking at the water coming over the spillway and that can’t be good.
Looks like it could erode the base of the damn at some point.
Prayers that it holds and everyone is safe...
Yuba County just announced evacuations.
I hope this thing holds...
Yeah, I'd like Gov Moonbeam Brown to explain why the damage to the spillway was apparent in 2013, and he decided to do nothing about it. The damage was happening even before then, but a large hole opened up in 2013. Could have been repaired then, while the lake levels were low during the drought. But no, he decided to focus on high-speed rail and sanctuary rights. The damage to the spillway blew open during the current winter storms. Then he decides to beg the feds for money to fix infrastructure, but still focused on asking for funds on rail as a first priority (rail electrification in SF Bay Area)!
This fiasco is man-made, caused by Gov. Jerry Brown!
Besides, last time I was in CA there was a riot and the SJPD did NOTHING. I'm not going back to California until concealed carry reciprocity takes effect, which could be a while.
If this thing breaks, looks like it could reach Sacramento.
Horrible...
If this fails, I will do my job as a human and a survivor of Oklahoma Tornadoes(speil check?) and and floods.
These people are just not prepared for what happens and honestly, no one is. Not even in OK but, we are use to it.
I will go and help in whatever way I can...
Count me in. I evacuated at 7:00 and didn’t make it to Sacramento until after 11:30 PM. Normally a 55 minute drive. Weird night. Nobody was moving on the highways and we were crawling on the back roads. You come up on a ranch at a decent elevation and it would be packed with cars and trucks with horse trailers spending the night I guess. I had a house to bail to in Sacramento and didn’t have to find a hotel, so that is what I did.
Trump is not joking about that trillion in infrastructure that is needed. It goes WAY WAY beyond roads and bridges. There is a lot of stuff you don’t see or think about like sewers, gas mains, underground electrical vaults, storm drains, airport tarmacs, and yes even dam spillways, all that have not been maintained in years beyond the occasional band-aid.
And then there are the California eco-nazis who want to tear the dams down and sue any time you want to repair a dam, let alone build a new one.
Maybe this high profile near-catastrophe or coming-catastrophe will wake up your average California commie lib to the fact that the environmental nazis are ruining things by blocking new infrastructure construction and repair and maintenance on existing systems.
Maybe the typical whacked out California commie-lib tax payer will support the building of new dams for water storage AND flood control, and tell the environmental Nazis to go to hell.
Nah, they are still Stuck on Stupid. They would rather see hundreds die and billions of dollars lost than let us build another BADLY NEEDED dam.
The base of the dam is safe. The problem is that the emergency spillway, used for the first time, is earthen fill. It was eroding the earth, and the danger was that the erosion was working its way towards the main spillway. The main spillway is already damaged with a football stadium size hole, spilling water in the other direction. If the emergency spillway eroded into the main spillway, the whole main spillway would be undermined and go, concrete and all, both spillways would then erode all the earthen fill letting loose unknown amounts of water. As long as they keep the emergency spillway from eroding towards the main spillway, the dam is safe. Unfortunately, the emergency spillway has the potential of collapsing a 30-foot tall section, which would unleash a 30-foot high wall of water from the lake.
My daughter was staying overnight near the area, she drove through there this afternoon on the way back to SF and said traffic was a nightmare. I'm just glad she got out of there.
Rumor has it the hillside where the spillways are, have a foundation of bedrock which the high velocity water flows can’t erode. So yes the area of the dam and around the dam are not eroding, so this has nothing to do with the construction or integrity of the dam itself. This has to do with the geology of the surrounding topography.
Well that and that “emergency spillway”. If that began to fail with a 30’ head of dam water behind it, the flooding would be catastrophic, but not the same as Armageddon, which is what you would get if the Dam itself failed, all 700-feet tall of it.
“These people are just not prepared for what happens and honestly, no one is.”
Hopefully the thing doesn’t fail, and that if it does there is enough time to get folks out. Glad to hear they are using all the lanes of the highway moving in one direction out. Just imagine all of the chaos just the evacuation is causing. Families separated, animals, getting to work, etc.
Here in Washington state (and Canada and Oregon) there is the Cascadia Fault out in the ocean. Will cause a huge tsunami when it goes, with the coast only having perhaps 20 minutes before the wave. Of course portions of the coastline might drop 30 feet in an instant the way they did 317 years ago, which would probably make the tsunami a moot point. But - talk about unprepared! Although really, there isn’t much you can do to prepare for everything that these events can bring.
In my youth I was fond of acts of irony and some stupidity.
Example:
The flood of Tulsa in 1984 was the worst recorded.
My Mom was worried about my brother, who took off and went to hang out some friend of his.
She asked I look for him.
I took off to go see if he was at this friends house, on the other side of town but, found travel to be complicated and dangerous.
I just couldn’t get anywhere.
Streets I didn’t know where below grade had only the roofs of cars exposed.
After an hour of trying several street after street, I gave up. It really was a hopeless excersise.
I went to my Mom’s house and informed her that it seems impossible to to travel the streets under these conditions and we should just pray for his safety.
While waiting out the storm and flood and old song popped into my head.
I called the local radio station to request and old Johnny Cash song.
They inquired what the song is and I simply said “Five Feet High and Rising”.
They called me choice name and hung up on me.
However, they announce some jerk had requested this song and while they didn’t name me, I was infamously famous for an hour.
A while later, they announced many others had thought the song would be of some levity given the situation and they actually played it.
If I recall, the story is based on an actual event Johnny Cash experienced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fpbCLNyPUA
Prayers for you...
Anybody know if this is close enough to Sacramento to have an adverse effect on someone driving south from Oregon to Sacramento?
Hell yeah. Traffic is FUBAR all way down to Sac...
Stay on Interstate 5, gas up at Redding and dont stop until past Sacramento. Highway 99 is backed up, many gas stations are closed or out of gas, all motels filled up.
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