http://www.sacbee.com/news/weather/article133818604.html#storylink=cpy
FEBRUARY 20, 2017 8:26 AM
Reservoirs feeding Lake Oroville are filled to brink as more rain rolls in
Diagram:
Posted on 02/12/2017 4:26:47 PM PST by janetjanet998
Edited on 02/12/2017 9:33:58 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Oroville Dam is the highest in the nation.
I do not believe those are bubbles. The surface is completely undisturbed. If these were bubbles, particularly if they were large bubbles, there would be some surface disturbance.
Squaw Valley recorded a wind gust of 199 mph and sustained of 177 mph overnight.
And thank you for staying on top of this situation. My last few days have been very busy and I appreciate being able to go to this thread and getting updated.
Is that current information?
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article133932379.html
FEBRUARY 20, 2017 4:36 PM
Continued erosion of Oroville Dam’s main spillway part of ‘normal process,’ state officials say
When the storms pass, Croyle said the department would turn off the water releases and work to reopen the dam’s power plant. Contractors also continue to place rock and concrete at the base of the dam’s emergency spillway.
http://www.kcra.com/article/part-of-hwy-50-in-sierra-has-buckled-collapsed/8959415
Part of Hwy. 50 in Sierra has buckled, collapsed
No. 1 WB lanes remains open near Bridal Veil Falls in El Dorado County
Updated: 6:46 AM PST Feb 21, 2017
http://www.kcra.com/article/evacuations-ordered-due-to-levee-breach-south-of-manteca/8958411
Hundreds evacuate after levee breached near Manteca
Officials halt breach, keep evacuations in place
Updated: 12:14 AM PST Feb 21, 2017
http://www.sacbee.com/news/weather/article133818604.html#storylink=cpy
FEBRUARY 20, 2017 8:26 AM
Reservoirs feeding Lake Oroville are filled to brink as more rain rolls in
Diagram:
> Continued erosion of Oroville Dam’s main spillway part of ‘normal process,’ state officials say
Laughable. Idiotic. It is not normal for a spillway to be destroyed. The destruction of the spillway caused operators to reduce flow which is what led to the emergency spillway being overtopped. The overtopping quickly led to severe erosion, which led to the evacuation order.
From last night.
Weather Service Reno has a graphic on their FB page. Can’t do facebook from my current location or I would link it.
I haven’t looked for photos this morning, but am curious, just how large is that growing canyon today? It looked a good fifty feet deep yesterday. Any problems with debris from erosion blocking the riverbed yet? Surprised if not.
Thanks for all the work you and others have put into this thread. It’s a great resource.
It looks like we dodged a bullet on this particular storm, but the crisis is not yet over. The main spillway is presently the only way to get water out of the dam, and it is heavily damaged.
The best way to release water is through the dam itself, but water released that way must go through the generators or it cannot be done. It will be a major job to get the generators back on stream, particularly if the early reports about the generator room being flooded turn out to be true. (Clearly reliable information about this has been nearly impossible to get.)
There may be more major storms this spring. But even if there are not the spring melt is certain to pour huge amounts of water into the reservoir. The upshot is that the main spillway MUST be used for quite a while longer.
Continued erosion on the lower half of the spillway until the spring melt is over seems certain. The information we have been given indicates this is not likely to be a threat to the dam itself.
A rarely mentioned element in all this is the nine upstream dams that feed into Lake Oroville. All of them are full. They have been used to reduce the flow into the lake, but that is not possible now that they are full. So, at least until they can be drawn down a bit, what goes into them must also come out at the same time. This lowers the margin of safety for the dam if there is another big storm.
Here’s what you need to know about the Oroville Dam on Tuesday, February 21.
The Department of Water Resources, CAL FIRE, and the Butte County Sheriff’s Office will be holding another press conference at noon Tuesday.
The Department of Water Resources will maintain outflow from the Oroville Dam flood control spillway at 60,000 cfs throughout the day. This rate of flow is consistent with the Department of Water Resources’ established plan objectives to continually manage lake levels, water flow, and support construction activities.
Despite current inclement weather, work continues on the area below the spillway, the monoliths, access roads, and various eroded areas created by emergency spillway runoff. Rock, aggregate and cement slurry continue to be placed into areas affected by erosion. This work will continue 24 hours a day.
http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/butte/oroville-spillway-what-you-need-to-know-for-tuesday/349680603
There is a photo of the inside of the power plant
as of Feb. 16 (last Thursday)at this link:
Currently it is picture #1 of 207
but that number will change when the next picture gets posted...
(it changed to #4 of 210 while I was typing this)
> Continued erosion of Oroville Dam’s main spillway part of ‘normal process,’ state officials say
The badly damaged main concrete spillway at Oroville Dam was pounded by massive volumes of stormwater this month, but its failures occurred well short of the maximum flow that engineers designed the system to handle.
The spillway began breaking apart when its gates were opened Feb. 7, allowing 55,000 cubic feet of water per second to roar down the slope. That was only 18% of the 300,000 cubic feet of water the channel was designed to carry per second, one of the factors that raise significant questions about its design integrity, engineering experts said. Eventually, the gash that opened up had grown to 500 feet in length and dug a hole 45 feet deep in the earth.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-oroville-spillway-damage-20170220-story.html
//
The spillway was destroyed at 18% rated capacity.
Actually, there is quite a bit of surface action.
This image capture (from a carefully searched - one of the video frames), of two separate bubble masses -surfacing & surfaced- reveals the interesting physics at play. The two side-by-side bubbles are a perfect capture of (1) the surface water bulging from an uprising "high density mass of bubbles (Froth)" that is pushing a "head of water". The uprise and combined water head bulge plus the "froth mass", forms a shadow. This shadow is in line with the sun angle.
"Froth masses" are interesting. They reveal a high density of small air bubbles. It takes a high pressure "jetting" action to create these.
When these surface, the high density of small air bubbles form a destructive interference of the normal concentric ring patterns a single "point" disturbance would normally create. However, there exists a mass of concentric ring patterns to all of the small air bubbles individually. This is the force that causes such quick surface dispersion and sudden widening on the water (2). But there is no "wave" action as a singular large air bubble would create.
The shape of the uplifting "froth mass" body determines the strange & interesting dispersal patterns from these large number of interfering concentric ring wavelet(s) combined expansion energy.
Hope this helps.
== nerd stuff: FROTH: VERB: form or contain a rising or overflowing mass of small bubbles: NOUN: a mass of small bubbles in liquid REDNECK: Beer (foam head)
Hydraulic Model Studies of the Flood Control Outlet and Spillway for Oroville Dam - California Department of Water Resources
https://www.usbr.gov/tsc/techreferences/hydraulics_lab/pubs/HYD/HYD-510.pdf
You can’t be serious. This is like the Book of Job.
Zamboni!
Ditto, and amen !
Anybody have pictures of the spillway as of today?
I searched and couldn’t find any.
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