Yangtze River Experiencing Serious Flooding as Water Exceeds Warning Levels at 5 Major Chinese Monitoring Stations

Floodwaters exceeded warning levels on May 22 across five major monitoring stations of the Yangtze River that runs from China’s west to east due to heavy rainfall in the past few days, according to state media Xinhua News Agency.

The monitoring stations are mainly located in the middle and lower Xiang River section near Dongting Lake, Hunan Province, and in the Xin River section near Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province.

According to hydrological monitoring data released by the Changjiang Water Commission of China’s Ministry of Water Resources, as of 2 p.m. on May 22, the water levels at the monitoring stations of Qilishan (Hunan Province), Hankou (Hubei Province), Hukou (Jiangxi Province), and Datong (Anhui Province) were 30.42 meters, 23.69 meters, 16.88 meters, and 11.50 meters respectively, among which Qilishan station recorded its second highest levels of the past 30 years.

Official forecasts are warning that the Wu River—an important tributary of the Upper Yangtze in Guizhou Province—along with the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze are set to receive more heavy rainfall until May 28, with water levels predicted to rise between 1 to 1.8 meters.

With the arrival of the flood season, submerged areas of Poyang Lake have exceeded 3,000 square kilometers for the first time this year, reaching 3,450 square kilometers on May 22 a month earlier than last year, which also broke records.

Last year’s flood season saw the Yangtze River basin experience its third-largest flood since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came into power in 1949. Poyang lake exceeded 3,000 square kilometers for the first time on June 26, 2020. Water levels in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze’s main course also exceeded warning levels, leading to the largest flows into the Three Gorges Reservoir since its completion in 2006.

The dam itself is probably over-engineered, lots of foreign engineering went into the design and construction:

https://journal.probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/who-is-behind-chinas-three-gorges-dam/

The wild card is if a large landslide, caused by one of the frequent earthquakes in the area, caused a tsunami-like effect in the water behind the dam.

Is it bad of me to hope the damn thing fails?

Well, yes, unless it can be arranged for most of the peoplbreke downstream to escape harm but the gov't to be washed away.

As for your other post, most serious engineers think there is very little chance of a major break causing a huge, sudden surge of water downstream. What is likely are controlled releases sufficient to cause significant downstream flooding. Included in that is, in sort of a worst case scenario if the dam is truly threatened, the possibility of blowing the locks partially or entirely to relieve the threat to the dam. This would create some very bad downstream flooding, but not the sort of "wipe out 1/4 of China" devastation that doomsdayers like to bandy about.

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