For the next 4 days, output from Oroville should be between 100k cfps and 140k. Predicted inflow at the height of the storm should be 220k cfps.
So for every hour between now and the large inflows, that’s an hour extra the dam can handle the inflow.
There were a number of considerations at Oroville; they wanted to see how the emergency spillway handled. They found out that it just wasn’t set up to handle much of anything, and returned to using the damaged spillway. They are repairing the emergency spillway just in case it has to be used again.
They also wanted to reduce the outflow to protect river fish from silt (?!?!?!?!?!??) but the people wearing big boy pants now appear to be in charge of Oroville and are managing the water and letting other agencies manage their things as they can.
+1 to you - thanks.
In addition to determining how the fish handle the silt and turbid water flow it might behove the employees of the State of California to determine how the Oroville and Yuba County residents handle the same.
I believe the “fish” problem was not the usual fish in the river, it was the hatchery below the dam: A big piece of CA’s salmon future (nearly 10 million salmon?) was there.
People should come 1st, of course, but 5-10 million less salmon would affect a lot of people.
As for the emergency spillway, I would not expect those “repairs” to last long in a repeat occurrence...