Two teenage brothers’ duck-hunting trip in Oroville, Calif., took a disastrous turn when one brother’s kayak flipped on a stormy lake and the other dove in to help. More than a week later, authorities are still unable to find either boy.

Wesley Cornett, 17, and Andruw Cornett, 19, went missing Dec. 14 during a hunting expedition on the Thermalito Afterbay — a 4,300-acre lake in Butte County with weeds up to 10 feet tall and temperatures that threaten hypothermia, according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.

On Monday, the Sheriff’s Office announced that all efforts to find the boys beneath the surface using divers and sonar technology had been exhausted. The search-and-recovery mission is now shifting to a “continuous limited search” focused on scouring the surface of the lake, using aircraft, drones, trained dogs, boats and onshore vehicles, the Sheriff’s Office said.

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Authorities first learned the boys were in trouble when Andruw Cornett dialed 911 to report that his brother’s kayak had turned over in the lake at 8:33 a.m. on Dec. 14, the Sheriff’s Office said. Dispatch staff advised him to remain in his kayak “multiple times,” but he insisted on diving after his younger brother to attempt to rescue him.

The Oroville region was inundated with a heavy rainstorm that day, causing some 5,000 Butte County residents to lose power, Action News Now reported.

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The first Butte County sheriff’s deputy arrived at the scene less than 15 minutes after receiving the call and was joined shortly thereafter by Cal Fire Water Rescue team members, the Sheriff’s Office said.

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About 9 a.m., the deputy reported spotting a kayak and possibly one of the brothers. About 20 minutes later, a kayak, paddles and waders were found, but the brothers were nowhere to be seen.

For the last 10 days a massive collaborative search effort has been carried out, using about 280 team members from 21 different agencies.

“Thousands of acres have been searched by boat, by ground and by raft,” Trevor Skaggs, with the Sheriff Office’s search and rescue team, said in a video shared by the Sheriff’s Office.

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Divers spent hours being dragged by boats beneath the lake’s murky surface, contending with challenging search conditions.

Weeds up to 10 feet high threatened to entangle them, while stirred-up silt made it impossible to see a distance of more than a few inches in the water, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Divers had to limit the amount of time spent below the surface because the very low temperatures put them at risk of hypothermia.

The thick vegetation and surface swell made it challenging for sonar technology to take clear and accurate images beneath the surface of the lake, which has a depth of 3 to 30 feet.

Divers found the elder brother’s pants last Tuesday. His brother’s wallet was found Thursday, and his jacket and phone were located Friday.

In a post on GoFundMe, April Clark, the boys’ mother, said Andruw is a hero in her eyes for trying to save Wesley.

“The Sheriff is saying this is now a search and recovery so I will have to also plan to lay my two boys to rest,” she wrote. “This is a freak accident that my family and I are trying to wrap our heads around and we also have 4 girls at home who we still need to care for.”

BUTTE COUNTY – Search efforts continue for two brothers who went missing at Thermalito Afterbay near Oroville over the weekend.

According to the Butte County Sheriff's Office, around 8:30 a.m. Saturday, one of the brothers was on a kayak when it overturned in the water – prompting the other brother to jump in to try and help.

The brothers, identified by authorities as 17-year-old Wesley Cornett and 19-year-old Andruw Cornett, have not been seen since.

Authorities say the brothers were out duck hunting when the incident occurred.

Throughout the weekend, search crews from around the region have been out looking for the pair. Dive teams have been part of the search effort, authorities say.

On Tuesday, the Butte County Sheriff's Office released a statement urging people not to call about volunteering to help in the search.

"We appreciate it, but at this time we are not requesting assistance from the public," the sheriff's office stated.

Search efforts continued as of Thursday, with the Butte County Sheriff's Office saying that San Joaquin and El Dorado county crews were using remotely operated vehicles with sonar and video. Crews located Wesley Cornett's wallet about 600 yards from where the 911 call was made after the brothers went missing in the water.

The Big Valley Dive Team was also deployed on Thursday to help search the water.

Thick underwater vegetation is hampering the search effort, officials say.

Cecilio Padilla

Cecilio Padilla is a digital producer for CBS Sacramento and a Sacramento-area native who has been covering Northern California for more than a decade.

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A Year in Review

Northern California’s significant rain and snow levels in 2023 continued to benefit Lake Oroville at the start of 2024. Rising reservoir levels from January storms prompted DWR to conduct flood control releases from Oroville Dam’s main spillway for the second year in a row. Releases began Jan. 31 and continued intermittently throughout the spring, providing critical flood protection to downstream communities. DWR maintains storage space in Lake Oroville during the typical wet weather months to ensure adequate space remains in the reservoir to capture runoff from rain and spring snowmelt. Releases are coordinated closely with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other water operators and adjusted as needed.

The Feather River watershed received enough precipitation and snowpack runoff in the first months of 2024 to fill Lake Oroville to capacity by early May for the second year in a row. As the largest storage facility in the State Water Project, Lake Oroville helps provide water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland, making spring an important time for water project operators to fill reservoirs ahead of dry months.

With a full reservoir providing prime recreation opportunities at the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area, the California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks) completed improvements to reopen the Bidwell Canyon Gold Flat Loop Campground. In addition to repaving campground access roads, three of the 37 tent/RV camping sites received accessibility upgrades with parking stalls and a clear path of travel to accessible restroom and shower facilities. Upgrades to the campground also included new water and sewer facilities to complement new power hookups that were completed in recent years.

In late June, DWR announced an update to Lake Oroville’s storage capacity. Because decades had passed since Oroville Dam’s construction, DWR sought to assess whether sedimentation (rock and silt settling on the lakebed floor) had altered Lake Oroville's storage capacity and topography significantly. Using an airplane-mounted LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser system and multibeam-sonar bathymetry instruments, highly detailed 3D topographic terrain models of the bottom of the lake were created, which DWR engineers used to calculate a new storage capacity of 3,424,753 acre-feet, approximately 3 percent less than previously estimated.

In early July, the Thompson Fire threatened the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area and several DWR facilities including the Hyatt Powerplant, Field Division main office, and Lake Oroville Visitor Center, with DWR activating its emergency Incident Command Team in response. While normal operations resumed by July 4, several recreation trails near the Diversion Pool and in the Potter’s Ravine area remain closed for repair and hazard tree removal. DWR and State Parks continue to assess fire impacts to recreation facilities and prioritize recovery efforts.

In August, DWR’s Oroville Field Division hosted emergency preparedness exercises for staff and partnering local emergency management agencies. A tabletop exercise included a review of the Oroville-Thermalito Complex dams, inundation maps, and an overview of DWR’s incident command team structure which follows National Incident Management System (NIMS) guidelines established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A second, in-depth functional exercise had DWR staff and emergency management partners responding to a mock emergency scenario. DWR leads emergency preparedness trainings on a yearly basis to ensure Oroville Field Division staff readiness for any type of emergency or incident. The exercises reinforce DWR’s commitment to enhancing emergency preparedness and maintaining relationships and collaboration with local emergency response partners.

Construction work also continued on the River Valve Outlet System (RVOS) at Oroville Dam. The system is a series of two parallel outlet conduits, each with two valves, that have the capacity to draw water from deep in Lake Oroville for release. The RVOS is a critical feature of the dam, providing the ability to discharge cold water to the Feather River to maintain water temperatures necessary for fish health. It also ensures the ability to maintain Feather River flows through RVOS releases during drought years, especially if reservoir levels drop below Hyatt Powerplant’s water intake structures.

DWR also made progress on a project to improve a 1.5-mile section of the Brad Freeman Trail between Cherokee Road and the Highway 70 Garden Drive overpass. Work this fall included paving an 8-foot-wide asphalt path and the installation of accessible box gates at trail entrance points, which restrict vehicles while still providing access for equestrians, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Future work is weather dependent and will include a 4-foot-wide decomposed granite path for pedestrians. The improvement project is supported by a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant through the National Park Service, with remaining funding for the $700,000 project provided by DWR.

Fuel load reduction and fire mitigation work continued on DWR property along Oro Dam Blvd. East near the Hyatt Powerplant, the Bidwell Canyon/Kelly Ridge area, and the Loafer Creek State Recreation Area. DWR's Fuel Load Management Plan is reducing hazardous fuels and the risk of catastrophic wildfire by thinning vegetation using hand and mechanical methods, accompanied by chipping. By proactively reducing ground fuels, thinning overgrown vegetation, and removing dead and dying vegetation, firefighters have a better chance at suppressing a wildfire. Between early 2013 and June 2024, DWR and its local partners have treated or retreated more than 2,500 acres of vegetation.

DWR’s Floating Classroom program returned this fall, offering free educational rafting tours on the Feather River to local schools and public members. The Floating Classroom program takes participants through Feather River spawning habitat while scientists with DWR and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission provide information on Chinook salmon conservation efforts, ongoing and planned research, restoration and monitoring projects, and fisheries management activities supported by DWR’s State Water Project (SWP). This year’s program provided free education to more than 900 local students, parents, and teachers, and over 650 community members.

Annual Chinook salmon spawning activities at the Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville were also completed. The Hatchery collected enough eggs to meet its normal production goal of 2 million spring-run fingerlings and 6 million fall-run fingerlings, with additional eggs collected to increase production this year. Another 1 million spring-run and 6 million fall-run Chinook salmon will be produced to address declines in Central Valley Chinook salmon populations during recent years. Chinook salmon fingerlings raised at the Hatchery will be released in the Feather River and San Francisco Bay between March and June to support inland and ocean populations. The Feather River Fish Hatchery is a SWP facility built in the late 1960s by DWR to mitigate impacts on fish migration resulting from the construction of Oroville Dam. DWR owns and maintains the facility and provides funding to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to perform spawning, rearing, and stocking operations.

DWR looks forward to initiating and completing more projects in 2025 at the Oroville-Thermalito Complex. The Lake Oroville Community Update will continue to share news and information with the community.

Oroville Recreation

The Lake Oroville Visitor Center will close all day for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Visitors may still access nearby trails during the holiday closures.

The Spillway Day Use Area and Boat Ramp will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Winter hours for the Spillway Day Use Area are in effect through April 30, 2025, with the recreation area open daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Upstream migrating fish totals through the Feather River Fish Monitoring Station between Jan. 1 and Dec. 13 are:

Current Lake Operations

Lake Oroville is at 791 feet elevation and storage is approximately 2 million acre-feet (MAF), which is 59 percent of its total capacity and 110 percent of the historical average.

Feather River flows are at 800 cubic feet per second (cfs) through the City of Oroville with 950 cfs being released from the Thermalito Afterbay River Outlet (Outlet) for a total Feather River release of 1,750 cfs downstream. DWR continues to assess Feather River releases daily.

The public can track precipitation, snow, reservoir levels, and more at the California Data Exchange Center. The Lake Oroville gage station is identified as “ORO.”

All data as of midnight 12/19/2024.

DWR wishes everyone a happy holiday season.

The Lake Oroville Community Update will return on January 10, 2025.

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Know someone who would like to receive Community Updates? They can email their request to oroville@water.ca.gov.

Rescue crews are searching for two teenage brothers who went missing while duck hunting in a popular boating area near Lake Oroville over the weekend. Wesley Cornett, 17, and Andruw Cornett, 19, were reported missing Saturday while at the Thermalito Afterbay in Oroville, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post. Deputies received a report of the accident at approximately 8:30 a.m., Megan McMann, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, told SFGATE.

The afterbay, located between Highway 70 and Highway 99, is part of the Oroville-Thermalito Complex; it allows use of motorized boats and jet skis, as well as swimming and hunting. The teenagers went missing after one of them overturned a kayak and the other swam into the water from the shore to try to find him, McMann told SFGATE.

Multiple law enforcement agencies across Northern California are looking for the brothers, including marine units from several nearby sheriff’s offices and personnel from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Cal Fire.

As of 11:40 a.m. Tuesday, the sheriff’s office said multiple boats were still searching for the boys. Members of the public have volunteered to help, but officials said they are not looking for assistance at this time. The rejection frustrated some members of the community, who have commented on the updates from the sheriff’s office questioning why authorities are not accepting the help and suggesting people do their own searches of the afterbay anyway.

On the day of the boating accident, the water was 46 degrees and swells were 4 feet high, McMann said. Wind gusts were also 20 to 30 miles per hour. This water search is "even more difficult" than normal because of large vegetation underwater, some up to 10 feet tall, which limits divers' visibility, McMann said.

Brian Evans, the search-and-rescue coordinator for the sheriff’s office, told KRCR-TV on Tuesday that the search is now a “recovery” effort.

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Salmon Spawning Operations

Annual Chinook salmon spawning activities at the Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville have been completed. The Hatchery collected enough eggs to meet its normal production goal of 2 million spring-run fingerlings and 6 million fall-run fingerlings, with additional eggs collected to increase production this year. Another 1 million spring-run and 6 million fall-run Chinook salmon will be produced to address declines in Central Valley Chinook salmon populations during recent years.

The hatchery’s spawning process collects eggs from returning adult females and milt (sperm) from returning adult male Chinook salmon to fertilize the eggs. After fertilization, the eggs are placed in incubators to develop for approximately 85 days. Once they reach the fry stage and can consume food, they will either be released into the Feather River or transferred to long ponds called raceways at the facility to grow into fingerlings. Chinook salmon fingerlings raised at the Hatchery will be released in the Feather River and San Francisco Bay between March and June to support inland and ocean populations. In addition, DWR and CDFW continued thiamine treatments to combat B1 vitamin deficiencies. This treatment improves the health of the fish, increasing the survival of Chinook salmon from egg to juvenile.

The Feather River Fish Hatchery is a California State Water Project (SWP) facility built in the late 1960s by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to mitigate impacts on fish migration resulting from the construction of Oroville Dam. DWR owns and maintains the facility and provides funding to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to perform spawning, rearing, and stocking operations.

Driftwood Abatement at Lake Oroville

DWR’s civil maintenance crews will begin deploying log booms within the next few weeks throughout the various branches of Lake Oroville to capture floating woody debris before it reaches the main body of the lake. With the rainy season underway, inflows into Lake Oroville are expected to increase with strong storms from atmospheric rivers. These higher inflows wash woody debris into the reservoir, which can impact water infrastructure and present a hazard to boaters. Over the next few months, DWR crews will be collecting, containing, and pulling larger pieces of wood out of the lake and away from shoreline areas using boom lines.

DWR crews spent a significant amount of time collecting woody debris in Lake Oroville in 2023 and 2024 following heavy storms and high reservoir levels with over 19,000 cubic yards of woody vegetation collected. Floating debris removal ensures continued infrastructure operations and the safety of the recreating public on Lake Oroville. However, boaters and other water recreationists should take precautions when operating watercrafts on Lake Oroville and should remain alert for floating debris.

Snow-Cember at the Visitor Center

Stop by the Lake Oroville Visitor Center each weekend in December for free winter-themed craft activities for kids three-years-old and up! Located at 917 Kelly Ridge Road in Oroville, the Visitor Center is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Snow-cember weekend craft activities include:

Staffed by knowledgeable guides, the Lake Oroville Visitor Center features interpretive displays on Oroville Dam, area geology, wildlife and habitat, hydroelectric power, and cultural and historical artifacts. View videos in the theater about the construction of Oroville Dam, walk or hike along nearby trails, and visit the 47-foot-tall observation tower that provides unsurpassed panoramic views of surrounding areas. Free guided tours for school and community groups are available by reservation. Parking and admission to the Visitor Center are free.

Lakeside Access Road Closed

Rising reservoir levels at Lake Oroville from recent storms have required the closure of Lakeside Access Road at Oroville Dam. While Lakeside Access Road is closed, vehicle access to the Spillway Boat Ramp and Day Use Area is available daily between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., with all vehicles and trailers subject to inspection by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) for security purposes. There are three other boat ramps at Lake Oroville that are open 24 hours per day and do not entail CHP inspections: Bidwell Canyon, Loafer Point, and Lime Saddle.

Oroville Recreation

Lake Oroville is one of the State Water Project’s premier recreational destinations and one of California’s best fishing spots. The lake provides both warm-water and cold-water fisheries, with excellent bass fishing opportunities during the fall and winter months. Be sure to check California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) fishing regulations before fishing. The marinas at Bidwell Canyon and Lime Saddle are open daily and provide a variety of services including a convenience store, gas, boat rentals, and more.

DWR, the California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks), and CDFW maintain over 92 miles of trails in the Oroville area. An interactive map of recreation facilities, including open trails and their permitted uses (hike, bike, horse, multi), is available on DWR’s Lake Oroville Recreation webpage. A paper trail map is available at various locations, including most entrance kiosks and the Lake Oroville Visitor Center.

Upstream migrating fish totals through the Feather River Fish Monitoring Station between Jan. 1 and Nov. 24 are:

Current Lake Operations

Lake Oroville is at 785 feet elevation and storage is approximately 1.94 million acre-feet (MAF), which is 57 percent of its total capacity and 108 percent of the historical average.

Feather River flows are at 800 cubic feet per second (cfs) through the City of Oroville with 950 cfs being released from the Thermalito Afterbay River Outlet (Outlet) for a total Feather River release of 1,750 cfs downstream. DWR continues to assess Feather River releases daily.

In November a series of atmospheric rivers brought heavy rainfall to Northern California, with Lake Oroville experiencing an approximate 26-foot rise in elevation between Nov. 19 and Nov. 30 due to runoff. Incoming weekend storms are expected to further raise water levels at Lake Oroville, but with the reservoir currently at 56 percent of its total capacity, there is still ample storage to capture storm runoff while providing flood control protection for the Feather River and downstream communities. Water inflows to the reservoir during November storms were as high as 64,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) while outflows in the Feather River through Oroville remained at a minimum of 800 cfs. DWR took advantage of the recent storm systems to capture as much water as possible in Lake Oroville, while continuing to support environmental and water delivery needs to 27 million Californians.

The public can track precipitation, snow, reservoir levels, and more at the California Data Exchange Center. The Lake Oroville gage station is identified as “ORO.”

All data as of midnight 12/12/2024.