Locals and regional water nerds alike have been flocking to see the massive, circular drainpipe-style spillway in action at Lake Berryessa this week, the first time it’s been active since 2019.
The 72-foot-wide spillway has a fairly unique design for a reservoir, pulling in overflows of water only when Lake Berryessa’s water level reaches a certain capacity point. (For perspective on the size, check out this overhead shot from a reporter for the Vacaville Reporter.)
After this week’s rains, the overflow began, and the sight is reportedly pretty mesmerizing.
“People were taking pictures and videos and just standing in awe,” says Peter Kilkus of the Lake Berryessa News, speaking to the New York Times.
Nicknamed the Glory Hole by locals, it is a morning-glory-style spillway, so named because its shape is like the flower — bot because of its impressive, uh, sucking.
As the New York Times notes, this type of spillway was necessary because of where Lake Berryessa sits, in a canyon, making a normal dam spillway impossible. The Glory Hole pulls water out of the reservoir and spills it out on the other side of Monticello Dam, into Putah Creek.
Pleasant Hill Lake in Perrysville, Ohio also has a spillway like this.
The last time this Glory Hole saw some action was in 2019 — and SFist posted one video at the time that was going around showing a hapless bird, a cormorant (though some were calling it a duck), getting sucked into the thing. A witness claimed afterward that the bird survived and was seen down in Putah Creek.
Humans wouldn’t be so lucky and no one is supposed to be swimming when this thing is in action. A Davis woman, 41-year-old Emily Schwalen, was killed when she got pulled into the current and went down the spillway in 1997.
Below, you can see what it looks like in drier times, when the lake level is much lower.
The Glory Hole was also in action in that wet winter of 2017, the same year that the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam was damaged when it was put into use for the first time ever, and got very close to catastrophe, with a massive downstream evacuation happening as a result.
Prior to that, it took in water in 2006 — so this is just the fourth time in 20 years.
Go check it out if you’re up in Napa or Solano county this weekend, while it’s still in use.
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