Before & After

[LDUBS]

One of the lakes I frequent has a morning glory-style spillway affectionally called the glory hole by locals. It is about 75' across at the top.

First photo shows the thing high & dry back in 2016 during drought conditions. You can see the rope/buoy barrier in the background it to keep folks out. Trout trolling in that area is pretty decent.

Second photo is by a guy with a drone. Water is reported to be 4' over the top of the hole. Incredible.

I'm going to make a wild guess that we are no longer at drought conditions.

 

[johnnybassboat]

That is both cool and scary all at the same time.

 

[gnappi]

Xibalba!

 

[JL8Jeff]

I saw that on the news the other day. I thought they said it's been a long time since it was high enough to even flow into it. It's a shame CA doesn't have a better way to capture some of this excessive rain to store for later use.

 

[hounddog]

Wow! At that rate it seems like the lake would get back to normal level in a hurry!

 

[jasper60103]

Dang scary!
I'm sure we'll experience more flooding as the rest of the country starts to thaw out.
In Minnesota, our glory hole is the Mississippi river.

 

[DaleH]

So ... WHERE does all that water go?

Besides volume, it sure looks to have some decent velocity behind it too :shock: !

 

[LDUBS]

Here is a pic I grabbed from the drone video that shows the dam -- Montecello dam at Lake Berryessa. The curved dam is 245' high above the creek bed. You can just see the overflow towards the top of the pic. The tunnel runs to the base of the dam where it exits into the creek. This is a Federal water project.

What you see is a small part of the lake which is about 25 miles long. From the dam the main lake is a 6 or 8 mile boat ride through a narrows. I used to troll for trout near the dam. Pretty good fishing, but I have to pay to launch at that end of the lake. The free ramp is about a 10 mile boat ride to the dam. I'm too cheap to pay for launching on top of the $15 bridge toll I have to pay to get to this lake. So these days I stay on the main lake.

 

[EZ707]

Awesome pics [emoji106]
When my big tin boat comes back from the shop I want to fish that area. It looks like some promising panfish waters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jim]

Cool but freaky! :beer:

 

[BillPlayfoot]

I've never seen pictures of that before.
Thanks for sharing

 

[richg99]

Interesting. One would think that you'd lose a lot of fish down the hole.

 

[WV1951]

Funny thing. I just recently saw a news report that the state is making very little, if any, effort to save water from these rainy seasons. Hasn't been a reservoir built since the 70's. The eviros and idiots in the legislature do not want to make any effort. The next major drought, write them a thank you letter.

 

[Crazyboat]

It's well past time to build a new water reserve or 3.

 

[noglass170]

Ahh good ole Lake Berryessa. I used to trout fish there and ride my motorcycle around it all the time when I was stationed at Travis. I could sit there and watch that Spillway for a while. VERY Cool. Thank for posting the pics and bringing back great memories.

 

[LDUBS]

Funny thing. I just recently saw a news report that the state is making very little, if any, effort to save water from these rainy seasons. Hasn't been a reservoir built since the 70's. The eviros and idiots in the legislature do not want to make any effort. The next major drought, write them a thank you letter.

Yeah, don't get me started because you wouldn't believe me. I mean, 3 or 4 years ago citizens of California voted to approve multi-$billions in funding for new dams. Nothing has happened because the state has blocked every attempt.

But, we have already spent about $5 billions on a bullet train that goes nowhere.

What, me worry?

 

[WV1951]

Yeah, don't get me started because you wouldn't believe me.

I would believe you. I follow the news pretty closely. BTW, we want our 3 billion back the we(the taxpayers) loaned you for that boondoogle.

 

[eshaw]

That "glory hole" is pretty cool but I'd avoid it like the plague myself. Too bad the stack isn't controlled by hydraulics so they could raise it up and down. Any boats ever got caught in that area?

 

[LDUBS]

That "glory hole" is pretty cool but I'd avoid it like the plague myself. Too bad the stack isn't controlled by hydraulics so they could raise it up and down. Any boats ever got caught in that area?

Never heard of a boat going in. Through I am sure there are fools that take their boats right up to the barrier.

I've trolled right up near the buoy barrier many times but that was when the lake level was below the funnel. The overflow is not a constant occurrence. It has happened for some duration or another about 26 times in the last 60 years. What make it so news worthy today is until last year the overflow had not operated for 10 years before that.

Of course swimming anywhere near it is prohibited. Many years ago a woman swam out and eventually went over the edge. She did not survive. Recently the news showed a video of a duck going over the edge into the spillway. A few folks claimed it survived, but there is no way that it possibly could have, or that anyone could have witnessed it coming out at the bottom of the dam. Kind of sad to watch the duck float over the edge.

I read that at max level, the glory hole can drain 48,000 cu. ft per second. That is unimaginable in my mind and I would be surprised if the water level has ever been that high. The pic showing the current overflow is still about 12 feet below max level, again from what I read.