High risk at Oroville Dam

There is extreme danger at Oroville Dam with coming rain and snow and a large snowpack

I wish to briefly report on the situation at Oroville Dam in California.

A small number of people, including Margo, have been putting out warnings about what is happening at Oroville Dam.

In 2017, after warnings thousands of people had to be evacuated in a chaotic manner at the last morning when it looked as though the Dam might not hold.

Since then the spillway has been rebuilt  and there have been reports of occasional explosions at the site which seem to have been associated with reports by USGS of "earthquakes" which were quickly removed from the website.

The level of the water in the lake is already high and normally the spillway would have been opened in the past at this time of year.  For some reason this has not happened despite the high levels of water and there is some suspicion that something might not be right and this is not being reported, in fact it is being actively hushed up.

This update from a few days ago gives most of what you need to know.

The situation in brief is that the water level lies at 889 feet and there is bad weather forecast to bring up to 4 inches of rain to the area in the next few days starting Wednesday (UST) in addition to all the water that lies upstream from Oroville and the melting of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains which have record snowpack

The figure I have picked up says that 1 inch of rain equates to approximately 12 foot rise in the lake level. That means that if there is 4 inches of rain that could potentially equate to up to 40-50 foot rise in the lake level.

This is a brief report on the very tenuous situation at the Oroville Dam.

SILENCE FROM THE AUTHORITIES

Meanwhile, there has been silence from the authorities and the locals are not being told anything.

Today the Butte district sheriff put out this reassuring tweet today.

Meanwhile there has been a court injunction taken out against the Oroville Dam Watch Group and they have been told  not to report on this.

One of the most authoritative people warning about the state of the dam is engineer, Bob Bea and there is an interview with him below.

https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2017-07-27/bob-bea-takes-us-deep-dive-through-his-dire-oroville-report?fbclid=IwAR2fG4yHNYKw4gGe9WeIosn1GVVG5o6zxK1vp6x1hIDd-Px0eW6QHjFKCJ8

Here is Margo's latest report on the situation