The concern is the erosion in front of the emergency spillway (the part to the right of BOBBYGRV’s photo).
When water started coming over the top, it started eroding the soil at the base of the emergency spillway. It the emergency spillway gets undermined, the concern is that it will blow out.
From what I’ve read/watched it’s more than that, they’re concerned about both failing. The only reason they lowered the output of the main spillway from 100k to 55k, while knowing by doing so the water would go over the never tested auxiliary, was because they were so concerned about the damage being done to the main spillway. As soon as the water started going over the auxiliary at a decent rate though they realized that was definitely going to fail. That’s when they issued the evacuation and decided to turn the main back up to 100k. It was the lesser of two not great options. Looking at how much has eroded in the later pictures from today I can see why they haven’t canceled the evac. That hillside has lost a TON of earth and until they can turn off the spillway it will just keep getting worse.
2-5" of rain coming their way later this week, should make things interesting.
LA Times has some better graphics of the issue with the spillway today.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-oroville-dam-how-20170213-story.html
The craziest thing about this was they were sued in 2005 because it’s pretty much settled science that a concrete lipped earthen damn like their auxiliary spillway will fail yet they did nothing and dismissed the lawsuit as nonsense. And of course the first time they actually have to use the auxiliary spillway EXACTLY what the lawsuit said would happened did happen. Some heads really need to roll over that once this is settled.
Spot on!
Good stuff but more importantly, has anyone rafted/kayaked that shit yet!!!
Lots of cool pictures:
it would be nice if they had some better narration for each of those images. some powerful stuff there.
there were FB Live feeds from the damn coming up in my feed this weekend which led me to believe there was a tragedy in the works but some brief googling yielding nothing.
what is the latest?
Can’t you guys talk about anything these days without it getting filled with conservative political bullshit?
^ Says the guy with Liberal political bullshit in his own damn signature. LOL
Like.
Win. Someone clearly has Trump sand all packed up in his vagina, like half my FB feed. 
Zapped
Politics involved in a discussion about public spending, govt ignorance and public safety…boooo
don’t let the hate discourage. we don’t need this place to become more of an echo chamber. i appreciate you
