Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
the day say and the end of the day. Then knowing the water that you'd let out of the
reservoir you could figure out what the inflow was. The problem was you didn't really
know what the water level was because the wind was blowing so hard. You couldn't get
any real accurate information on the water surface. Just a little bit of difference in water
surface made a lot of difference in Q, in inflow.
If you were off--sometimes we'd go for four or five days where we were just kind of
guessing at what the inflow was by extending curves that we had developed from previous
days. But until we got to a day where it was real calm, we wouldn't know for sure what
the level of the reservoir was. Then we would have to go back and readjust our estimates
for those previous days when we got a day where we knew pretty sure what the water
surface was.
So there is a lot of guesstimating and things like that that you had to work with. Even
with the best tools, you can't be that precise on those big reservoirs level. You can have
gauges half a dozen different places around the reservoirs, but still when you're dealing
with hundreds of a foot, that one hundredth of a foot will make quite a bit of difference
in your flow. It's very hard to be that accurate.
Q ..
Yes, because you're dealing with some pretty large reservoirs.
A
Oh yes, those are big projects. But then that was part of my work. Then we had some
levee projects. We were studying levee projects. We would go out, during flood periods,
and look at damages that took place during the flood.
One of my experiences was flying out with aerial observation of flooding in the district.
The pilot owned his own airplane, and he would fly it out and we would go over all the
area and make observations of what area was flooded and what was happening out there
just by flying over it. This guy was crazy when he was flying that airplane. He would
fly under wires and he'd dive down in the valley there and he'd be steering the airplane
with his knees and taking pictures. He was also the photographer.
He would be heading right at a mountain or a hillside taking pictures. Then all of a
sudden he would grab the stick and pull it. It would go zoom upward. It was quite a thrill
to go out with him.
Q ..
It sounds like it.
A
I did that on a few occasions.
Previous Page
