Good Morning! 51F @ 7:00AM. Sunny. High around 65F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph.
That's quite the Ford, wng. Nice TV, but I love the doors, and especially the way the floorboards are right on the ground. Might have to revise my way of thinking about 4WD suspension. :laughing:
Yesterday I mentioned the
Metabunk website, and the analysis and discussion of the spillway failure going on there. The site is also involving into a very good communication conduit for dam authorities. In addition to linking to news media feeds like aerial video and still photography and man-on-the-scene reporting, the Department of Water Resources is staging regular press conferences that are live streamed and preserved as on line videos. I'm listening to one now from yesterday afternoon that lasted about an hour. New info is that the water level in the discharge pool below the spillways rose to the point that the electrical power plant had to be shut down in order to avoid damaging it. It seems that the additional 15,000 CFS of flow through the plant was being impeded by the debris pile at the base of the damaged main spillway, and DWR is now facing additional work to clear the debris. To do that they'll have to cut the spillway flow, which goes against the need to drain the reservoir enough to reestablish the flood control capability of the dam in the face of storms due in the later half of next week. Temporary repairs aimed at stopping the uphill erosion of the main spillway are also planned, additional activities that will interrupt spillway flow. While erosion of soils and clays has stopped in the main spillway cleaning up the water quality entering the river, concrete and large rocks are still moving down into the discharge pool. It was also revealed that the local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, had removed high voltage power lines from towers in the auxiliary spillway area (that's the new name for the emergency spillway). There were concerns that water flows through the auxiliary spillway could jeopardize the integrity of the tower bases, causing them to fall. That would not only interrupt power from the generating plant, but also deenergize certain controls within the dam itself. PG&E then re-routed the lines to the other side of the river so that there was no interruption to the control electronics. DWR has a delicate balancing act to maintain through the rest of this rainy season, but seems to be finding a path forward and is doing a good job of communicating the reasoning behind that path. If the media takes the time to listen and in turn accurately report the information, it should go a long way to clearing the misinformation that has inspired panic in some of the locals.
Not by much, but inflows to the reservoir finally dropped below outflows at about 5:00 this morning. Or at least those that can be measured did. It's not clear to me, with the auxiliary spillway now in play, if the figures on the CDC web site still reflect all the water that's moving through the system. Also of note is that the reservoir elevation is more than a foot and a half above the top of the auxiliary spillway, so there's a LOT of water moving through it now.
Took some time to photograph and video the lake below the house yesterday, as hopefully this will be a once-in-a-lifetime view. I'll try to get some of it processed and posted later today. Pretty blue skies and sunshine made that a pleasant task.
Also helped my bodyshop neighbor solder some lugs onto a new wiring harness he and his son were making for the boy's boat. Dug out an old time soldering iron, a big copper bar with a handle on one end and a point on the other, then heated it with an air acetylene torch. It still worked well after all these years; sometimes the old ways are still the best.
Also swapped out the stereo receiver for a new one in the great room that would handle the switching of video as well as audio signals. Sure cleaned up the wiring behind the cabinets, as optical fiber and component/composite leads were replaced with HDMI cables. Reconfiguring the Logitech remote control was simple as making a few mouse clicks, something that would have taken half a day with the old JP-1 software.
I'll be back to work on the van headlight mounts this morning, and try to spoon on another set of tires on the touring bike this afternoon. Also need to move another pallet of firewood into the garage before the next storms hit, but that'll probably have to wait until tomorrow.
