Posted on 02/15/2017 5:59:22 PM PST by Mariner
Oroville
Crews worked into the night Wednesday to shore up the emergency spillway at troubled Oroville Dam, racing to fortify the structure before the next series of storms, the first of which was forecast to hit before midnight.
Three storm systems will move into Northern California during the next six days, according to the National Weather Service. The first system will drop about an inch of rain in the Oroville area between 10 p.m. Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday. Greater amounts of precipitation will fall in the mountains northeast of the reservoir.
Forecasters are confident that the first two storm systems will not cause huge inflows into Lake Oroville. They are less confident about the third system, which is due sometime Tuesday. That storm could be bigger and warmer, meaning more rain and snowmelt streaming into the swollen reservoir.
“The third wave is looking like our problem child,” said Michelle Mead, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Oroville Dam, about 65 miles north of Sacramento in Butte County, holds the state’s second-largest reservoir and serves as a crucial flood-control structure for the eastern Sacramento Valley. Wednesday’s all-out effort to bolster the dam before a new round of storms capped an anxious week that has seen serious malfunctions in both its main and emergency spillways, hobbling the dam’s ability to release water in the midst of an unusually wet winter.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Meanwhile, these guys say to expect up to 12 inches of rain over the next 10 days...unlike the article which is "hoping" for but a couple of inches in the first two waves. They'll get more than that tonight.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/15/super-soaker-atmospheric-river-taking-aim-on-beleaguered-orovilledam/
Great graphic at the link.
Really? Got a link?
ooops
It is in the text of the article that is the subject of this thread.
Imagine a world without white males. Scary!
Still, I doubt 60,000 tons will make much of a difference if water crests the weir again.
Sounds like that's about another 1000 tons of rock to wash into the river and clog it up.
I seem to remember some quick setting concrete that they tried using in the Vietnam war - that would probably have been a better option.
Knowing those parts and those crews, 70%-80%.
The rest would be Mexican. You do get a lot of them in this sort of job.
“They have placed but 1,200 tons of material on the eroding spillway. “
1. Reading the article: A
2. Posting a comment to get the thread started: A
3. Posting an incorrect statement: F
I admit to a morbid curiosity over this. Since the residents below the dam are evacuated (except for looters who I don’t care about in a positive way)and the houses should have insurance, it would be interesting to see what the collapsing dam and flood would look like.
They let everyone go back home.
1200 tons?
We built a spillway with 1000 tons of shot rock for a municipality.
A month later, they got a 1000 year rain. 7 inches in 30 minutes.
Rolled those 2 ton boulders around like they were pebbles.
I tried to point out a simple design flaw, but everybody knows, those 30 year old government engineers know waaaaay more than those of us who have been working in the field for 40 years.
It blew out right where I told them it would.
And we got paid again to fix it right.
They are placing it and covering it all with concrete slurry..
Ought to help, but I’ve see water just erode new dirt around the sides of the concrete.
“They let everyone go back home.”
That’s crazy!
If the dam breaks what will they do just blame Trump?
If I lived there I’d have returned just long enough to rent a U-Haul and have it loaded and on the road.
Reliable forecast to counter the article’s statement of “confident only about an inch” will fall in the first storm, and the second will be moderate as well...
https://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Oroville%2C+CA
They are placing 1,200 tons per HOUR and have been at it for about 50 hours.
They probably have another 50 hours before the lake sees the heaviest inflows. The crews will keep working as long as the winds allow.
Best case 120,000 tons with a concrete veneer. Not much given the scale.
It seems to me that the CA Dept of Water Resources has been avoiding showing imagery of the main spillway since they raised the discharge rate to 100,000 CFS.
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