There has been a lot of bizarreness at the Oroville Dam this spring, but nothing beats the series of unexpected events that occurred last night starting at about 7PM East Coast time, 4PM LOCAL.
The National Weather Service (NWS) reported for the past few days AND all day yesterday that clear and dry weather was expected for the Oroville catchment area, with the possibility of a few sprinkles. That was it. Then WHAM a monster thunderstrom system suddenly popped up traveling, east to west (opposite of normal,) and HAMMERED the area for hours.
(All this mud in the water leaking from the gates of the main spillway indicates serious erosion somewhere behind the gate house structure.)
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted this morning, and has been predicting for days, that the inflows to the dam were going to rise dramatically today and continue for about two weeks. But then just before all the strangeness last night all this changed and they said there was not going to be a serious jump in inflows this year after all due to sudden warm temps and remaining snowpack melt off. It was all just suddenly cancelled.
Then two hours later the CDEC site that reports Oroville Dam reservoir levels and in/outflow numbers goes offline (and is still offline this morning) so that no one in the public knows how much the unexpected and massive thunderstorms added to the reservoir overnight. So...but we do know a couple inches probably fell directly over the catchment area.
(That thin line is all that stands between us an deaths of thousands and likely economic disaster for the nation.)
Some are saying this was a helicopter, but others are saying it was some kind of weird canister launched into the lake caught on camera:
https://twitter.com/susanwolding/status/1134248988620857350
- susanwolding
I would think the water levels would be easily surpassing 896' with what occurred last night. That is less than 5' from overtopping the emergency spillway that--get this--they've been working desperately just off camera installing new drain pipes, suddenly, the past few days. (Sure hope that cement cures before all that water starts flowing over it.)
The President has been advised multiple times now about the situation out there, and IF this dam should suffer a major failure in the coming days, he will be partly responsible for not stepping in. Remember that Trump told FEMA not to refund The State of California for all the repair work from their 2017 negligence, so the moon bat pols out there are probably itching to blame SOMETHING on Trump...
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LATE UPDATE...(two hours after posting this article). The CDEC site just came back on around 8AM Eastern time. They are claiming 895.09 at 4AM local time...i.e. just .14" increase after last night's freak storm, and NO SURGE in inflows.
We need visual confirmation. When the sun comes up, and if that particular livestream is working, I will report back...
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LATEST UPDATE: The reservoir cam is back up. Hard to tell if they've messed with the numbers, but it is noticeably higher than last night.