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Oroville Reservoir

Formed by Oroville Dam on the Feather River, California, near (yes!) the town of Oroville. (Great gold rush name, too--"oro" = "gold" in Spanish. ;) The reservoir had been extremely hard hit by the drought, and there were lots of earnest prognostications that it would take _years_ to recover, if ever.

Well, it took one season. In mid-February >100,000 cubic feet per second of water (something over 2800 m^3/sec, if I've done the arithmetic right) was pouring down the Feather, and not only did the reservoir fill, it spilled over the concrete bypass spillway to the point that heavy damage ensued. The middle section (all concrete!) was completely eroded out. Fortunately, the hard metamorphic bedrock resisted further erosion, once the loose surface material was washed away, and the overflow established itself in a bedrock channel--looked kinda cool, actually, like a natural slot canyon.

The dam and its clobbered spillway made national news in the US. Dunno about overseas, but there are gobs of videos all over the net; here's one of a series done by the same aerial photographer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2aD53JIDzo

He also has one of reopening the spillway a couple of weeks ago, to the tune of 35K cfs:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=65TMuhsKuVM&t=155s
This is being done to lower the reservoir to make room for the spring runoff! The video also gives a good view of the eroded-out middle of the spillway.

So, what we're looking at in this pic is the newly lowered level, from its all-time high. The driftwood on the shore below consists largely of trees eroded out from the shore by wave action at the high water level. Even now, the water level is _still_ higher than it's been in years; note the flooded tree. Note also that in the satellite view this inlet is completely dry!

And there's still lots of snow waiting to melt in the Sierra--
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9 comments

Smiley Derleth said:

This is beautiful. It's a very different aspect than we knew from tv all those days.
8 years ago

slgwv replied to Smiley Derleth:

I'd wanted to get pix of the dam and spillway, but it's all shut off right now. Presumably they're fixing them!
8 years ago

Pam J said:

I was looking at the earth observatory space station pic of this earlier !

The snow pack this year is more than the total of the past 4 years.'=

Btw... the second vid is "not available"
8 years ago

slgwv replied to Pam J:

Huh. Thanks for letting me know! I repasted the video link, and aside from having to restart it, it seems to work now.
8 years ago

slgwv replied to Pam J:

Our local ski resort received >750" of snow this season (current base depth 221"), and they're staying open thru Memorial Day!
8 years ago

Gudrun said:

Oh yes, Oroville dam made it into the news here too! Good to read your description which puts the press' panic mongering into perspective.
8 years ago

slgwv replied to Gudrun:

Yeah, the media always focuses on the present and tends to hype on its (allegedly) cosmic significance. It's particularly exasperating, tho, when the professionals who should have better historical perspective fall into the same exaggerations. There was a comparable drought in the early 90s--Lake Shasta, on the Sacramento River at the north end of the Central Valley, fell so low that debris from the construction of the dam became visible. The level had not been expected to fall so low, ever! And there was similar handwringing at that time about how it would take years to recover...well, then as now, it took one season, and conditions went from drought to flood almost overnight. This sort of year-to-year variability will most likely increase, but it's a big challenge to humans and their institutions. It's hard to take flood preparations seriously when you're in the throes of a drought; and conversely. But that's what you have to do!
8 years ago

Don Barrett (aka DBs… replied to slgwv:

Well put re 'hype' about changes in the states plumbing system. I was planning a short trip in May up 395 towards you to see what was happening with all the melt, but I'm running out of empty stretches of time.
8 years ago

Diane Putnam said:

The dam overflow was quite an event - a lengthy one, too, seems like. The videos and photos of the dam were pretty spectacular.
8 years ago