OMG, I haven’t lived in CA for over 3 decades but I still feel huge relief vicariously. Droughts are one reason I never went back. It makes growing fruit harder, but I love the intensity of our green wet growing season on the east coast where droughts are measured by weeks, not years.
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Doesn’t the snowpack in the Rockies feed the Colorado?
If so that is good news for the downriver reservoir lakes
Mike
Video of Oroville from Feb 27…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyvDPt-HU3g
Can this thing be fixed in a year?
They better go at it full speed…all summer. I wonder what the plan of attack is?
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Better call Servpro…
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Yes sir, it does. A large portion of our municipal water in S. California comes from either the Feather River up in N. California, or the Colorado River on our border with AZ. So yes, good for the downstream reservoirs, as well as for us here in So Cal.
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OMG. What a mess. And the size and scope are demonstrated by how puny those VERY large earth moving machines are. This is staggering. And, since California is broke, not sure where the monies will come from 
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I saw the video in another site this morning. I made an estimate that 100000 cubic meters of mountain are gone, and who knows how much mountain was eroded in the emergency spillway (not shown in this video).
The Feather is silted up forever basically (which is possibly a minor issue at this point), but the question is will the mountain hold back he water with all those holes?
@MES111, yes it feeds the Colorado as well as a few other rivers depending upon how far N/S and E/W you are. About 6 or 7 different watersheds in the state.
Latest numbers show the CO river snowpack is at around 130% of normal. So good but not the really big numbers that the CA Sierras have gotten this winter…
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The catchway basin is, but downstream the river is fairing ok.
The holes are down to bedrock. Here’s a perspective view:
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Can you elaborate on this please. Thanks
Could they move that spillway…build a new one in another spot and just close that one off??? I just can’t see how you could fill that in and hope it holds.
I’m wondering if they even need to rebuild most of the spillway – build walls on the outside and let the bedrock be the foundation? Will be interesting to see what strategy they use.
Can it be fixed in a year? Absolutely. Will fighting between California and the Feds carry on for six months before much of anything is done? My money is on that.
Yes that will be interesting. If filling in I’d be thinking large boulders for a base. Nothing smaller than 3-4ft. Then pour a stronger concrete spillway over that. Bedrock might be an option for the lower part. Some is exposed now but one would need to know more about the boundaries and properties of that material. I doubt they go that way. One things sure I’m no civil engineer so my opinion is worth what it costs…!!
How do they work on the spillway if snow melt continues to fill into the lake? Pumps? Drain it more maybe?
There is a third exit: the inlet pipes to water supply conduits and the power generators at the base of the dam. I don’t know if that combined flow rate is sufficient to keep up with the input rate from snow melt.
ok…so that release should be enough to not let it overflow…got it.
Still some massive thought process will go into fixing that, billions, and hope that it doesn’t fail again in the future.
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