They are saying that the collapse of the spillway is a matter of hours away. Hope they are wrong, but the erosive power of rushing water are often underestimated badly. The water pouring over the emergency spillway is eroding the base of the spillway levee at the bottom of the spillway “hill”. Once enough of that is gone the pressure of the water on the other side will cause a catastrophic collapse.
Yesterday morning the flooway plains between Sacramento and Woodland, which are normally dry, looked like a raging torrent miles wide, with the water only a few feet below the railroad trestle on the other side of the causeway we were travelling on. The river channels around West Sacramento are nearly full to the top. West Sac is like New Orleans - a city built in a bowl with river channels on all sides.
That’s where the water from any Oroville dam failure would wind up, on its way to San Francisco Bay. The potential is for some nasty flooding, and another big storm is days away...
There are about 8 gallons per cubic foot iirc. At 50,000cfs that is 400,000 gallons or3,200,000 pounds per second moving at 20mph for a low estimate and you have an unbelievable amount of energy. Nothing we can make can withstand such force for an extended period of time.
Sounds similar to an Ice Age mega flood.
Does anyone have any idea if there will be bad flooding downstream just from what is currently happening? The normal spillway is one thing. But the emergency spillway is at least doubling what the normal spillway is releasing.
A comment on this feed said Sacramento levees failing:
https://www.periscope.tv/pseudojd/1gqxvqLdgbQJB