Sceptical Science
Luck to be submerged? California seems to have fallen into a persistent pattern of having either far too little or far too much water available at any given time. February of 2017 saw California's Oroville Dam come close to catastrophic failure as a massive surge of water into the reservoir caused the main spillway to spectacularly fail. Dam operators responded by activating the emergency spillway but were eventually forced to reopen the main spillway despite its heavily damaged and perilous condition. During the course of the event, 180,000 persons living downstream were hastily evacuated. The dam's survival ended up depending far too much on sheer luck rather than the preferred method, engineering. In sum, atmospheric rivers juiced by climate change combined with inherent faults in Oroville's main spillway lead to the brink of a major disaster. Is California Sinking? |
