Thanks for the great work you and the other contributors continue to make to this thread.
We are in a much needed lull and the media has gone back to sleep.
I’m impressed with the amount of rubble they have been able to move since shutting down the spillway. It’s also encouraging to see the generators slowly coming back on line.
However, it is certain to rain again and the snow is certain to melt. It seems certain the spillway must be used again this spring, quite possibly for several MONTHS straight.
We all hope the emergency repairs they are still in the process of making will hold up. Although I’m not a civil engineer, I know a bit about how to build things and how to find out if they really work (my undergraduate engineering degree was in a specialized area of electrical engineering).
In this case we have a shocking level of deferred maintenance, apparently flawed original design, and a patchwork of desperate emergency repairs to make up for it. The list of unknowns in this repair is so long that every engineer I know would expect something unforeseen to happen when it is put to the test.
What they have done WILL be put to the test some time this spring. The odds are very high that something unexpected will happen when it is. The REAL test will be how successful they are responding when it happens.
Based on what I have seen once they finally got serious about things, I suspect they will also overcome whatever unexpected setback is coming. I was not so optimistic two weeks ago.
outflow has jumped to 10300
@CA_DWR: Oroville Dam primary spillway repair plan expected in coming weeks, with construction to begin in couple months @kcranews
I've always enjoyed talking to electrical engineers. They have some of the best stories, and some of the best "banter". One "banter" line that explains somewhat why the digital H/W engineers didn't like the "analog world"... as an analog designer said, "Analog is that scary world between 1 and 0".
One funny story was from an Analog power supply design engineer. Back in the day they built prototype circuits in a "3D soldered elec component wire balls". This was simply to minimize stray reactances & give high resistance to limit coupling to circuit nodes. The engineer had it working great. Went for a snack (chocolate bar). After that it was operating strangely. Drove him to frustration. Closely inspecting the tight "circuit wire ball" he noticed a tiny piece of chocolate had fell into the rats nest, lodged itself, and changed the conductivity between two separate legs if the tiny axial resistors in the wire ball.
In a way, the electronics engineering world (especially high tech) has more dimensions & a lifetime of projects that would satisfy any appetite of curiosity. The downside is the stress.
You still in the field of your expertise?