Flooded Yolo Bypass looks like an ocean for the first time in a decade

A number of the Sacramento River weir gates were opened Monday morning, releasing a wall of water downstream and flooding the Yolo Bypass. This is the first time the gates have been opened in a decade.

When you drive Interstate-80 over the Yolo Causeway, you feel like you're passing over a massive lake and the water stretches as far as the eye can see in some places. It looks like you could put an ocean freighter in the middle of it.

And consider this: The Yolo Causeway stretches across the width of the bypass and it's 16,538 feet long. In comparison, the Mississippi River is roughly 7,600 feet wide at its widest, in New Orleans.

A flooded Yolo Bypass on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017 A flooded Yolo Bypass on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017 Photo: Courtesy Department Of Water Resources Photo: Courtesy Department Of Water Resources Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Flooded Yolo Bypass looks like an ocean for the first time in a decade 1 / 33 Back to Gallery

In years of heavy precipitation, the Yolo Bypass serves as a water storage area for the Sacramento Valley. Its 2,000-foot-long weir with 48 gates prevents water from flooding populated areas and diverts it into the massive floodplain of farmland, duck hunting clubs and protected wildlife habitat.

The Department of Water Resources said Tuesday that the agency would be opening 6 additional gates on the Sacramento Weir, flooding the area with even more water.

No, it's not the ocean. This was the view this morning along the Yolo Bypass from the Amtrak. #CAflood pic.twitter.com/hlhUsQ1EiZ — Biological Sciences (@ucdavisbiology) January 10, 2017

The bypass can absorb water at a rate of a half-million cubic feet per second, four times the capacity of the main stem of the river.

"It's meant to move water through the Sacramento Valley and away from the metropolitan area," explained Jay Lund, a University of California at Davis professor in civil and environmental engineering. "It's not really a lake. It's a moving lake. It's a flood bypass, and in some ways it replicates the natural function of the flood plain."

The Sacramento Weir was constructed 100 years ago, and across most of its history, its gates have been opened and the bypass flooded on an average of six years out of every 10, according to The New York Times, but with the drought, the gates haven't been opened in a decade.

If you want the surreal experience of driving across the Yolo Bypass, you better get to Sacramento soon. Lund anticipates that much of the water will disappear within a week.