The eye opening thing to me is not the inflow or the storage, but rather the fact that they held the primary spillway at 60K CFS while the emergency spillway was being topped... they had so little confidence in the integrity of primary spillway that they were willing to let water flow over an emergency spillway that had never been used before.
Re: 1262 - I think that a big part of those numbers on that chart have to do with the fact that the main spillway was damaged and they wanted to try to go without it. A few hours of scouring the hillside as water topped the “emergency/Aux) spillway told them that that was NOT an option. There was genuine concern that it would be compromised. Which is why the evacuation was ordered Sunday night (and I would say that was prudent).
They were spilling precious little in the early part of February and really didn’t open things up until they fully witnessed the damage that was caused by the overflowing water.
I suspect that there’s either been a change in leadership since Sunday, or the acting director learns very fast.