Disaster Scenario in China

We continue our coverage on China floods with several points including ground breaking news about cavitation and how water flowing at high pressure can destroy concrete.

First, the weather outlook is very very bad. Find out more from this channel .

These are not regular storms, powerful cellular systems like monsoon type events. A very large storm cells forms over Chengdu and circulates over the area from Wednesday to Friday. This is forecast to drop up to hundreds of millilitres of rain per hour.

We also update our failure model for 3 Gorges Dam.

So what has happened. First of all , we have to deal with sources. The source we are basing on is a website called Windy.com. It has been in operation since 2014, and has grown from a 1 man show to 15 people. It aims to have the best weather data models around. IBM’s Weather Channel also forecasts a thunderstorms for the region over here.

The biggest issue is the part labelled in pink. According to Windy, about 1m of rain is expected to be dropped on Chengdu in 48 hours beginning Wednesday. That water drains straight into the Yangtze river basin and heads towards the already saturated 3 Gorges dam. Chengdu is part of the Upper portion of the Yangtze river basin.

The key factor which makes this a potential catastrophe is the amount of rain forecast to be dropped over the area.  Of course, national governments can check against their weather satellites, but with China, the question is whether they will warn their people?

Note this is a failure model means it is like an episode of Seconds from Disaster, if our Red Alert prediction comes true. We hope it does not for the sake of the people in China.

A big issue facing the 3 Gorges Dam is cavitation. Water and air at high pressure can destroy concrete, as this plump boy explains over here. It is now possible that large holes are forming within the spillways of the 3 Gorges Dam literally destroying the dam from within. As no media is allowed near the 3 Gorges Dam, the last picture the world saw was water hurtling out at high pressure. Dams are not meant to operate under those conditions for a sustained period of time. The dam becomes hollowed and unstable and once the water overflows by next week according to Weather models, the dam is at risk of collapse triggering destruction all along China.

In the worst case failure model, the dam does not disintegrate but turns over as the erosion on the river bed makes the foundation unstable. The weight of the dam creates a moment in the anticlockwise direction and the dam literally slips into the reservoir, triggering a tsunami.

Our resident dam engineering expert has also updated a model to show why we now expect overflowing of the 3 Gorges Dam by Week 3 of August 2020. With the level saturated and the expectation of a mega storm cell this week, and also as the entire water storage systems (the lakes, the rivers) are all at limit capacity, Sir Wenger has mentioned that the probable outcome should be considered.

I am not talking about whether I  like China or I don’t like China. I am talking about a inflow versus outflow. If the dam cannot retain the water., where does it go? Over the top, is the probable answer. The water level at 165m means that the dam is less than 10% of design limit. If the forecast of the mega storm cell in Chengdu materializes, then the inflow could be in the order of 100,000 – 150,000 m3 gushing into the Yangtze river basin. Notice how just a slight divergence between inflow and outflow can raise the water level in the dam directly. The Chinese Communist Party should just stop lying and start making preparations. – Sir Wenger

Sir Wenger pointed out that if you look at the graph, provided by the 3 Gorges Dam corporation in its Hydrological Report 2018, it does not take a large difference between inflow versus outflow to raise the dam’s water level.

He was quite furious that most major Western newspapers were keeping quiet due to self censorship and it was up to YouTubers and independent newspapers to publish the facts and warn the people.

Lastly, we have no gripe with the Malaysian Government. Social media folk can post to YouTube and  United is in the Champions League.