Yeah, that’s been in the back of my mind...were they releasing water heavy as it approached max? Was it the broken spillway sluice that made them stop dumping and let the water reach max? Did tree-plugged turbine intakes additionally hinder flow?
No they released it too fast in the spillway. It went over the side of the spillway and started digging down under the spillway. Soon the spillway had no earth under it. And a large section of it collapsed. Its like a huge sink hole that formed from the water rushing over the side of the spillway. The reality is that they needed to let more water out earlier. But they were trying to keep the reservoir as full as possible and the got caught with too much water.