Things have appeared relatively quiet at Oroville Dam for the past couple of weeks, but a lot has been happening. DWR has been clearing debris from the diversion pool and has successfully started up releases through the Hyatt Powerplant, but the drawdown had some negative impacts downstream. Here is our latest update.
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Here is Tuesday morning’s installment of our update on the Oroville Dam spillway incident. For background, please see our earlier blog posts, starting last Thursday, February 9, and most recently our update of 
What a difference a day makes! As of Friday afternoon, it appeared unlikely that Oroville Reservoir would rise enough for water to flow over the emergency spillway, as inflow into the lake had been declining since early Friday, the rain had stopped, and the primary spillway continued to be used to manage outflow. But the gaping hole in the spillway, coupled with concerns about downstream flooding, resulted in the story traveling all the way back to 
As many of you know, the big news on Tuesday was that the spillway on Oroville Dam had developed a large crater from water eroding away the Oroville Spillway structure. Based on the large hole, DWR stopped all flows down the Spillway to evaluate the damage. Water users downstream started to get nervous as Oroville was rising quickly, and folks feared that water could come over the emergency spillway, which would be uncontrolled.