THE water level has dropped behind the tallest dam in the US, reducing the risk of a catastrophic spillway collapse and easing fears that prompted the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream.
Officials from the California Department of Water Resources are set to inspect an erosion scar on the spillway at the dam on Lake Oroville, about 150 miles north east of San Francisco.
Authorities ordered evacuations on Sunday for everyone living below the lake out of concern that the spillway could fail and send a 30ft wall of water roaring downstream.
"We grabbed our dog and headed to higher ground - away from the river," said Kimberly Cumings, who moved with her husband, Patrick, and three-year-old daughter to Oroville from Fresno a month ago for a new job.
They were eating at a restaurant when the evacuation order came.
A driver with a large vehicle and three children of her own gave them a lift to the Red Cross evacuation centre at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico.
"You can't take a chance with the baby," Mr Cumings said of their decision to flee.
The water level in Lake Oroville rose significantly in recent weeks after a series of storms that dumped rain and snow across California, particularly in northern parts of the state.
The high water forced the use of the dam's emergency spillway, or overflow, for the first time in the dam's nearly 50-year history on Saturday.
The threat appeared to ease somewhat yesterday as the water level dropped.
Officials said water was flowing out of the lake at nearly twice the rate as water flowing into it.
Sunday afternoon's evacuation order came after engineers spotted a hole on the concrete lip of the secondary spillway for the 770ft-tall Oroville Dam and told authorities that it could fail within the hour.
With more rain expected on Wednesday and Thursday, officials were rushing to try to fix the damage and hoping to reduce the dam's water level by 50ft ahead of the storms.
The sudden evacuation panicked residents, who scrambled to get their belongings into cars and then grew angry as they sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic hours after the evacuation order was given.
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