Colliemom wrote:Annie, high side article about catastrophic floods a possibility in California too. With the way the climate is changing anything is possible.
Thanks for the post, Sue, I always enjoy reading them.
Yes the article about (possible) catastrophic floods in California was alarming - but not surprising. In 2017, during the Oroville Dam disaster. . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam_crisis. . . I was evacuated from my home for three days when the main spillway at Oroville dam failed during an historic series of rain storms (spillway failure meaning that water couldn't be released to relieve pressure on the dam), and it was thought that failure was imminent (not of the dam itself, but of the emergency spillway - which would have been nearly as bad).
Oroville dam, at 770 feet tall, is the tallest dam in the United States (heck of a lot of water up there - 3.5 million acre-feet of water, when the dam is full.
One acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons of water).
Oroville dam and lake
It is not a concrete dam, but rather an earth fill dam. During that series of storms, the lake impounded behind the dam had filled to nearly the top of the dam - and the main (concrete) spillway had failed, so they began to use the "emergency spillway" (which was nothing more than an earthen hillside) which began to erode (in other words, also to fail). And it was still raining -
hard - with more rain on the way.
I live about a mile from the Feather River, about 20 miles downstream of the dam. Oroville dam is a dam on the Feather River. The bulk of the water from the dam would have followed the Feather River channel. . . think a 150-foot tall wall of water coming down the river.
Had the dam let go, my house would likely have just been. . . gone.
Both failed spillways have since been demolished and rebuilt - and we are assured that there is no further risk.
To me, this is kind of like saying that something is "earthquake proof": if the ground shakes hard enough, and long enough, the potential for failure is high.
. . . If it rains long enough, and hard enough (LOL - and maybe throw an earthquake into the bargain - there is a known earthquake fault at Oroville dam) the potential for dam failure is definitely present.
So it goes. . . LOL. That is my happy news for this morning.
Thanks for thinking of me, Sue. Please leave your porch light on for me. . . I might be on my way sooner than you think.
Anne