Oroville Dam Spillway Damage

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WetEV said:
Changing climate will require not only maintaining but upgrading infrastructure.
Off-topic utter nonsense.

What do the data ACTUALLY say?

There is NO TREND in precipitation in CA over the past 122 years:

CA_Precipitation_1896_to_2017.png


If you combine this with the fact that CA water usage has dropped about 20% in the last 25 years, you learn that the infrastructure in CA gets MORE adequate as time goes on.

But certainly the last two decades are the driest ever in CA, aren't they? Nope:

1998-2017 Average Annual Precipitation in CA: 21.40 inches
1918-1937 Average Annual Precipitation in CA: 19.36 inches

In other words, the rainfall in CA is now 9% higher than it was early in the 20th century when human-caused CO2 was virtually non-existent.
 
RegGuheert said:
WetEV said:
Changing climate will require not only maintaining but upgrading infrastructure.
NO TREND in precipitation in CA over the past 122 years

Trend isn't the subject, at least today. The subject is variation. The variation is increasing. A simple measure of variation is squared difference from the mean.

Plot of Anomaly^2

v0s9ibw.gif


RegGuheert said:
In other words, the rainfall in CA is now 9% higher than it was early in the 20th century when human-caused CO2 was virtually non-existent.

Sure, perhaps the same total precipitation, with more of it rain, less of it snow. Faster snow melt. More droughts, more floods. More variation.
 
Do we really need another thread debating climate change? :roll: Let's keep this one specifically regarding the Oroville Dam.
 
drees said:
Do we really need another thread debating climate change? :roll: Let's keep this one specifically regarding the Oroville Dam.

So you want to ignore that climate change impacts the Oroville dam?

That's nice.
 
WetEV said:
So you want to ignore that climate change impacts the Oroville dam?

That's nice.
No. I just want to ignore the continuous arguments regarding climate change itself. Almost certainly climate change is changing precipitation patterns which affects the amount of water reaching our reservoirs. But that's not the cause of the Oroville Dam spillway failure.
 
WetEV said:
Trend isn't the subject, at least today. The subject is variation. The variation is increasing. A simple measure of variation is squared difference from the mean....
...Sure, perhaps the same total precipitation, with more of it rain, less of it snow. Faster snow melt. More droughts, more floods. More variation.
I'll keep it short then, +1 :)
 
jhm614 said:
Marktm said:
Had an analogous failure in Texas in a major CORP OF ENGINEER'S lake. The overflow spillway was severely eroded and formed a new mini Grand Canyon for miles! This exposed really nice archaeological structures - the state is making money with tours in the canyon. Man is no match for catastrophic natural events.
Interesting! When and where did this happen?

CalTech did an article:
http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech...anyon-carved-just-three-days-texas-flood-1628
 
I think CA has survived the worst drought in recorded history just fine. Reservoir system has worked quite well IMO.
Why all the uproar? So fix the spillway and the other maintenance issues being ignored on the rest of them and get on with your day.

I worry more population growth more than climate changes.
 
1918-1937 Average Annual Precipitation in CA: 19.36 inches

I guess the Dust Bowl years have been forgotten, along with the cause. This is significant because the last decade in California has been marked by the virtually complete drying out of large areas of land, much like in the Thirties. How does this drying of vegetation affect this particular situation? Has anyone looked at the vegetation on that emergency spillway zone? Does it look like a sound root system is in place to resist erosion when the spillway is used?
 
smkettner said:
Why all the uproar? So fix the spillway and the other maintenance issues being ignored on the rest of them and get on with your day.
And miss out on such a great opportunity to promote an agenda? No thank you!
 
Here are a couple of videos from a drone showing the erosion resulting from the spillway waterfall:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyvDPt-HU3g[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlSGDGTaCh0[/youtube]
 
philip said:
The shadow 25 seconds in on the first video tells me that's no drone.
I saw the same thing, a helicopter :)
Still both vids were quite impressive, hard to imagine all the area that was eroded away, water while totally necessary can sure be destructive :(
 
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