February 11, 2017
1330.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of North and West Hemisphere
February 12, 2017
0130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of North and West Hemisphere (click here for current 12 hour loop - thank you)
February 13, 2017
0130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere
February 13, 2017
1330.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere
February 13, 2017
By Samantha Schmidt and Derek Hawkins
About 188,000 residents near Oroville, Calif., (click here) were ordered to evacuate Sunday after a hole in an emergency spillway in the Oroville Dam threatened to flood the surrounding area. Thousands clogged highways leading out of the area headed south, north and west, and arteries major and minor remained jammed as midnight approached on the West Coast.
Even as they fled, however, the flow of water over the spillway halted late in the evening, stabilizing the crisis. But officials warned the damaged infrastructure could create further dangers as storms approach in the week ahead, and it remained unclear when residents might be able to return to their homes.
Lake Oroville is one of California’s largest man-made lakes, with 3.5 million acre-feet of water and 167 miles of shoreline, and the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam is the nation’s tallest, about 44 feet higher than the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The lake is the linchpin of California’s government-run water delivery system, sending water from the Sierra Nevada for agriculture in the Central Valley and for residents and businesses in Southern California.
After a record-setting drought, California has been battered by potentially record-setting rain, with the Northern California region getting 228 percent more than its normal rainfall for this time of year. The average annual rainfall of about 50 inches had already been overtaken with 68 inches in 2017 alone....
