That’s 100% me as well – but interesting to think about.
My impression is they won’t be able to start serious work until later in the summer. The power plant helps, but won’t be able to handle the flow. Hopefully we don’t get a lot of early heat in spring – there’s far more water in that snow than our infrastructure can handle in a short period of time. And it would probably wash out my campsite in Yosemite in May too!
I agree, although the intakes used for the power plant also serve large conduits for the intra-state water network. The combined flow is significant but as you said, a heat wave in May could easily over tax the system.
The Merced, Stanislaus, etc. rivers are all booming right now!
The lake I use to live near, Pine Flats east of Fresno, 1,000,000 acft capacity, was used to water stone fruit trees around Reedley and Kingsburg. It was nearly drained empty each summer. So even when the snow was melting the lake was being drawn down rapidly. They are probably limited in draining off water from Oroville right now by the capacity of the river flow and any export of water south.
Because 100000 cubic meters of dirt flowed into it.
100000 cubic meters would fill a channel 5 meters deep, 15 meters wide, and 1 1/3 kilometers long.
Yes, it appears I was grossly underestimating the amount of debris. It is closer to 700,000 (1M cubic yards) including the emergency spillway erosion
I believe that is less than the volume of the catchway. Also, if they brought in a fleet of Hitachi EX 8000’s I believe they could remove it in a matter of months. Check out the average volume a single machine moves per day.
It’s been interesting to watch the water recede daily as they cut output from Oroville. There was a newly planted walnut orchard that was under water for a couple of weeks now… I’m guess the trees didn’t survive having their tops under 2’+ of water 
This video shows clearly the water (with the spillway half opened) chewing soil away below the spillway
Checking the soil today I found the top two inches have dried out. So I gave them all a half watering; i.e. turned on the valves for 1/2 the time of a summer watering.
Looks like the southwest finally gets its heat…enjoy it!
Not sure if I’d like to live in California.It rains too much. Brady
What??? The Seattle area has twice as many rainy days per yr as San Francisco 150 vs 73 and nearly twice the cloudy days 201 vs 105. And most of CA at lower elevations has less clouds and rain than San Fran. Rainfall is 37 vs 23 inches. Even in winter CA has long stretches of sunny weather. Not so in Portland or Seattle. I don’t know how anyone stands the constant clouds, drizzle, and 30s-40s all winter long in the PNW.
i think you missed the sarcasm ;p
Maybe being a native might help.I’d probably move to a better fruit growing area,but that means I have to live in that environment,even if the plants grow great,that may not be the same for me.
I wish my skin could handle the sun better.
By the way,it’s drizzling right now. Brady
I love your irony, FN, even if somewhat else might call it trolling.
Just kidding, but it does surprise me you missed the irony in BB’s comment. Must have been the end of a long day.
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