Even if the entire front north side of the spillway had failed, there was still almost 100 ft of dam behind it. Of course, this is not a view that was available to the news crew that was shooting the 2011 story or to Mr Burton who first reported it to Channel 10. Overhead sat map of Van Norden Dam spillway But let’s take a look at the dam during the runoff just a year before (a relatively normal year) in Figure 1.įigure 2. One might think that the added flow intensity could have caused the crack in the front of the spillway. It was rated in the top 5 snowfalls in the area which is saying a lot. I know what many of you might be thinking after watching this, “Maybe the dam is a danger!” Before you decide that the sky is falling, let’s just take a look at the facts surrounding the events and what actually was going on with the dam.Īs anyone who was up here in the winter of 2011 knows, it was and epic snow year. As you will see, this solved the mystery. This week I was doing some Googling research on the Van Norden Dam and I came across the following newscast from Channel 10 news in Reno in June of 2011. What we didn’t know was the mystery of what prompted that request. We also heard that the State was responding to a request from Nevada County Emergency Services. Why can’t people just leave it alone?” We knew that the current hoopla started in the summer of 2011 when the Department of Safety of Dams (DSOD) came out and inspected the dam and put it back under their jurisdiction because it was larger than 50 acre-ft of water.

Many people that have contacted us ask the question I will paraphrase here: “Why, after 38 years when PG&E breached the dam and it was dropped from the jurisdiction of the State, has the lake become an issue.

Satmap maps crack