The spillway was (in theory) designed for much more than 50,000 cubic feet per second; I'll try to find a citation. In reality, it failed well before the state

The spillway was (in theory) designed for much more than 50,000 cubic feet per second; I'll try to find a citation. In reality, it failed well before the stated tolerance and developed holes. Once that happened all bets were off. Wikipedia has more info; it gives the capacity of the gates above the spillway as 150,000 cu ft/s, and says the spillway developed cracks in 2015.