While most of them are looking for ways to avoid the regular rain that falls from atmospheric rivers, some take advantage of heavy weather conditions to improve forecasts and help control, and finally modernize, the complex labyrinth of the sailing waterways hydrating California.
Meteorological researchers with the Institution of Oceanography Scripps of UC San Diego workers and the Yuba Water Agency during the recent storm launched a series of contemptuous balloons carrying radiosonds, devices measuring atmospheric conditions and transmitting real -time data, as part of a continuous effort to improve forecasts.
For people in the Yuba screening area, these efforts can also improve the prevention of floods, because operators of the new bullard bar and oroville dams have more information on how to operate the dams of The word of the Yuba and Feather rivers, respectively.
This practice in itself is not new, but the objective of collecting this information and using it to manage tanks like the waters behind the dam of the new Bullards bar in the county of Yuba presents modern wrinkles to the policies of Water management rooted in old weather studies of decades.
“Atmospheric rivers in the past two decades have really been identified as the type of storm that causes all the major floods in our region,” said John James, Yuba Water. “The importance of scientifically understanding (the) has therefore really reached the avant-garde.”
The partnership between Scripps and Yuba Water, which controls the New Bullards dam – and manages the risk of flooding, water supply and hydroelectricity for the county of Yuba – dates back to around 2019.
For the Water Agency, studies, officially known as research on the operations of tanks informed by forecast, lead to smarter forecasts, which are then used to inform the way in which they regulate the reservoir levels, everything By leaving a space for controlling the required floods.
“We use these forecasts to make decisions about how to release water and when to hang on to the water,” said James. “Essentially, because these forecasts are improved, we improve the way we can manage our water in the tank while reducing the risk of downstream flood.”
“A generational opportunity”
The recent measurements of the atmospheric river help to shed light on the changes in water control manuals for the region’s dams, based on an agreement concluded between Oroville operators and the Bullards barrage after the ‘New Year’s flood of 1997.
This event caused serious floods in Yuba county which took lives and destroyed the houses, leading to the agreement which stimulated the coordination between the dams that whisper the Feather and Yuba rivers.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is updating the underlying manual. It also incorporates the functioning of the Oroville dam at the top of the Feather river, which converges with the Yuba river downstream near Yuba City and Marysville.
“This is a kind of generational occasion to incorporate new, most recent and larger on science and technology without introducing additional risk for flood control,” said James.
Consider it as hardware and software.
The equipment, or physical infrastructure, is the spillway and the dam, which, in the case of New Bullards, retains nearly a million acres of water acres.
The software, in this case, is a water control manual that dates from the moment when the dam was built in the 1960s, which dictates how operators use the dam and the spillway, or the equipment, to release the ‘water.
If the dishes to remember from the project between Yuba Water and Scripps are viable, they can influence and inform the redesign of the wider manual of the body of American army engineers. Scripps also worked with the Oroville dam, which is managed by California Department of Water Resources.
Flood control and water supply
The work in the county of Yuba has focused on the management of flood control, in accordance with the origin and priority of the prevention of the floods of the Water Agency. But similar scripps projects in other parts of the State have helped other essential reservoirs for the management of water supply.
Part of the atmospheric river recognition program, another of the scripps, is to launch radiosonds in different state regions, collecting information to better predict the structure and landing of atmospheric rivers.
In addition to meteorological balloons, the program also consists of launching radiosonds from planes called “hurricane hunters”, fleeing by the ocean by the pilots of the national ocean and atmospheric administration as storms approach.
“They are able to make a very clear snapshot of what the storm is right at the moment,” said Subin Yoon, director of field operations’ Center for Western Weather and Water extremes.
All these data is devoted to the upgrading of models, which in turn benefits people controlling the dams which protect the communities close to the floods.
“This makes water management more advantageous to use forecast decisions for these large dams and dam systems,” said Yoon.
The measures met during the winter events of California at the beginning of 2023, which were filled with atmospheric rivers, improved certain forecasts of around 12% on average, said Julie Kalansky, Director of Scripps’ Center for Western operations Mether and Water extremes.
“The New Bullards Bar and the Lake Oroville system are unique in that it started as a system together,” said Kalansky, “while some of the other projects that we are considering an individual reservoir and evolve towards several reservoirs long of the same …. “
The Yuba County project also benefits an advanced overview of the quantities of snow compared to the rain that falls during a storm that radiosonds and other meteorological instruments capture.
Out of the winter spill
Yuba Water Agency has planned to create a second spill at a lower level of the dam, which would allow more versions opportunities, because the current spill is high, which requires that the tank is almost full before the exit.
The agency last week began to release water from New Bullards Bar, sending water to the North Yuba river, passing through its new Colgate plant, creating space for a storage space in the middle in the middle recent atmospheric river.
Operating the spillway is not unusual for the winter operations of a dam, when the dam makes the additional flood space available, but it did not often occur at the New Bullards Bar.
“We spend years without freeing water from the spillway,” said Dede Cordell, communications manager for Yuba Water. “It only really happens when we start to worry about the encroachment in this flood space … which is managed by the body.”
The flow of the Yuba river more downstream from the dam, near Marysville, where it feeds on the Feather river, is also affected by rivers in the middle and southern Yuba, which feed on the main navigable track of the river river South of the mother and Marysville.
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