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I would say that if you live in a flood-prone location downstream from this dam then consider getting out of harm’s way for the next 3-4 days as there is a ton of rain coming in tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday. If the system can hold up against this one, then there will probably be time to manage things back to a good place, but I wouldn’t stick around for the next three days, especially if I could afford to go on a side trip. If this dam is going to go, it would be Tuesday or earlier.


19 posted on 02/19/2017 3:47:09 PM PST by Peter ODonnell (Listen for my radio call-in program on channel A in your brain, yes caller ... I'm listening)
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To: Peter ODonnell
Actually, living under this dam (about 30 miles down stream), I only partially agree with your assessment... If you are in a flood prone area, you should be out of your home for this storm. Anywhere north of Fresno. But that has nothing to do with this dam.

First and foremost, if this dam completely fails as this article speculates, it will be because some significant and awful event took place. A massive earthquake that triggers some big slides that causes a pressure wave through the lake to take out the dam.

What is a worry is the auxiliary spillway, designed for one particular event and was tested with a far different one - which resulted exactly in how engineers said it would - significant erosion that would dig back towards the auxiliary spillway wall. There is a fair danger if they ever let conditions repeat that it would topple over and send about 25 feet of water right into the Feather River.

But not over the next few days. With the dam 50 feet below maximum, it is 20 feet below the lowest reach of the emergency spillway. That is, honestly, more than enough room to handle this storm. Even if the emergency spillway failed, it would take a combination of multiple events to threaten most people along the Feather River which was designed (and previously tested) to handle in excess of 360k cfps (that's 2.7 million gallons per second.)

And in my case, if the worst case were to happen, I've got 4 hours to get out of harm's way. And safety is 3 miles down the road.

As for notification, when they pushed the panic button in Oroville, our emergency services triggered the ‘code red’ system, a combination of app, e-mail, phone, and text notifications. Warning was sent to all residents within 3 minutes where I live.

40 posted on 02/19/2017 10:00:57 PM PST by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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