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[OB] Everstorm Timing


Jofwu

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EDIT: Leaving the original post beneath, but wanted to note some changes...

Updated analysis in comment post below: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/61693-ob-everstorm-timing/#comment-645602

Some comments about this original post: With Oathbringer out, we now know that the Everstorm (typically) comes in precise intervals. I got word from Peter via PM that the precise interval they used is 9.1 days. I also got word that the 10-day number referenced below (concerning Shallan's night at the bars) is probably in error. Lastly, the map below has some errors. First is that the latitude/longitude lines on the dust jacket map are scaled wrong--the digital version on Brandon's website is supposedly more accurate. Second is that the lines do not indicate degrees (i.e. 360 degrees/circle). Peter has confirmed that there are 200 "squares" horizontally and 100 "squares" vertically in the online version. All of these points should explain the confusion raised below.

 

ORIGINAL POST:

I started another topic that got into this topic, but I think it's time for a fresh one now that we have a few key pieces of information. I'm having trouble seeing how all of this fits, so I'd like to see if anyone else sees the solution.

First important piece of information is the second passing of the Everstorm in Alethkar that we heard about in Chapter 23. The second is this map, which I've marked with latitude/longitude and a few notable locations:

map.thumb.png.ab54ab8fd58b53799af0aa025640983b.png

I've put together this timeline of events:

Day 0: Everstorm summoned on the Shattered Plains in the afternoon
Day 3: Lightday
Day 8: Everstorm passes Yeddaw around sunset, Everstorm passes Urithiru after sunset
Day 9: Everstorm passes Hearthstone around noon
Day 16: Everstorm passes Alethkar (time unknown)

I feel pretty good about these dates. The Battle of Narak was 3 days before Lightday. Sadeas's body was discovered 6 days after the battle. The Everstorm arrives in Urithiru 2 days after that. (6+2=8) Kaladin left 2 days after Lightday and the Everstorm hit at noon on the 4th day. (3+2+4=9) Shallan's night as Veil was 10 days after Sadeas was discovered (per Peter, and it fits with other numbers). The Highstorm was the next day. And Kaladin says the Everstorm came again the day before that. (6+10+1-1=16) Other than Peter's comment, all of these are straight from the text and don't leave much room for interpretation as far as I can see. (all sources located here)

I've been assuming that the Everstorm moves at a constant speed, and I've recently recalled that one of the no-yet-released Interludes suggests that this is the case. One of those which Brandon did a reading of. I'll put details about this in spoilers, for those curious:

Spoiler

From the Ardent Alista interlude:

"Two data points make a coincidence. Three make a sequence. This is plenty. The Everstorm travels at a constant speed, unlike the highstorm."

This is presumably sometime after this Veden monastery has been hit 3 times. It suggests that Everstorm timing has been consistent from first to second and from second to third arrivals.

As you can see above, however, the timing above doesn't appear to be consistent. Hearthstone is about 1.5 hours behind the Shattered Plains when you consider time zones. Put it together and you see it took >9 days to circle the planet once and 7 days (plus or minus half a day, we don't know precisely when it hit Alethkar the second time) to circle the second time.

The problem goes even deeper when you look at travel time across the continent. You can see some of the math for that in the other thread I linked. (need to look at those numbers again with this new map, but the one I had before was pretty close) 

Any thoughts?

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I'm having a hard time thinking of an explanation except do we know for certain that Chapter 23 with Kaladin is taking place on the same day as Chapter 22 when Adolin and Shallan meet with Ialai? Chapter 22 ends with the announcement that a highstorm has been seen at New Natanan, and Chapter 23 shows Kaladin looking for shelter from this same storm. But do we know this particular highstorm traveled from New Natanan to Kaladin's location in the same day? Maybe it's a slow moving highstorm and there is a gap between Chapters 22 and 23 time wise? 

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10 hours ago, Andy92 said:

I'm having a hard time thinking of an explanation except do we know for certain that Chapter 23 with Kaladin is taking place on the same day as Chapter 22 when Adolin and Shallan meet with Ialai? Chapter 22 ends with the announcement that a highstorm has been seen at New Natanan, and Chapter 23 shows Kaladin looking for shelter from this same storm. But do we know this particular highstorm traveled from New Natanan to Kaladin's location in the same day? Maybe it's a slow moving highstorm and there is a gap between Chapters 22 and 23 time wise? 

I wondered about that, but I think it's got to be the same day. Putting my thoughts down for anyone else wondering the same thing.

It's noted that the Everstorm moves slowly, relative to the highstorm, and it takes maybe 2 or 3 days to cross the continent. I've always gotten the sense that highstorms take less than a day to cross the whole thing. Even if it takes a day or so, it shouldn't take more than a few of hours to travel from the coast to Alethkar. The meeting with Ialai happens in the afternoon in Urithiru, which is about 3 hours behind Alethkar. That would mean the highstorm took maybe an hour or two to travel from New Natanan to Alethkar. If you assume Shallan's chapter was late afternoon and Kaladin's chapter is late afternoon the following day, that means the highstorm took nearly a day just to go from New Natanan to Alethkar. I don't think that fits with what we know about them or with them being faster than Everstorms.

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I wonder if the everstorm slows down over the ocean? Otherwise it doesn't seem to work out properly. I assume we have 20 timezones for a 20 hour day. Looking at the timeline of the storm from Yeddaw (sunset) to Urithiru to Hearthstone (next day noon), it moved across four timezones in about 3/4 of a day or 15 hours, give or take a couple hours for variable sunset times. That's 3.75 hours per time zone. 3.75 x 20 times zones at a constant speed is 75 hours to circle the planet. That's a little less than four days.

It's possible I'm thinking about it wrong, but it seems the storm must have variable speed in different parts of the planet for it to work out right.

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1 minute ago, Starla said:

I wonder if the everstorm slows down over the ocean? Otherwise it doesn't seem to work out properly. I assume we have 20 timezones for a 20 hour day. Looking at the timeline of the storm from Yeddaw (sunset) to Urithiru to Hearthstone (next day noon), it moved across four timezones in about 3/4 of a day or 15 hours, give or take a couple hours for variable sunset times. That's 3.75 hours per time zone. 3.75 x 20 times zones at a constant speed is 75 hours to circle the planet. That's a little less than four days.

It's possible I'm thinking about it wrong, but it seems the storm must have variable speed in different parts of the planet for it to work out right.

Starla, yes this is exactly the other half of the problem I can't figure out. I wanted to do the math again thoroughly, but you made the point very succinctly.

The time zone difference from Yeddaw to Hearthstone should be considered. I have that as about 4.5 hours (about 80 degrees longitude). And for no axial tilt, sunset should happen at the same time. So the Everstorm hit Yeddaw 4.5 hours after sunset Hearthstone time and then Hearthstone at noon the next day. That gives about 10.5 hours of travel time. There's a bit of wiggle in that. Exact time it hit Yeddaw is unknown, and Kaladin's comment about noon doesn't mean noon exactly. But it should be correct within a couple of hours. So 10.5 hours to cross 80 degrees longitude gives under 48 hours. Less than 2.5 days to circle the planet.

The math is a bit more complicated if you consider the Everstorm travelling a great circle path rather than moving a constant X degrees longitude per hour. But it doesn't yield wildly different results, I think. It's possible that the latitude/longitude numbers I've got are wrong. I'm assuming the map has 180 degrees of latitude and 360 degrees of longitude. They could theoretically use a different unit of angular measure. But one of our other maps has the latitude numbers marked, and I don't think this is the case.

But then... I guess slower speeds over the ocean doesn't have to be inconsistent with that interlude observation I referenced, if their data is based solely on the arrival times at a single location.

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36 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Starla, yes this is exactly the other half of the problem I can't figure out. I wanted to do the math again thoroughly, but you made the point very succinctly.

The time zone difference from Yeddaw to Hearthstone should be considered. I have that as about 4.5 hours (about 80 degrees longitude). And for no axial tilt, sunset should happen at the same time. So the Everstorm hit Yeddaw 4.5 hours after sunset Hearthstone time and then Hearthstone at noon the next day. That gives about 10.5 hours of travel time. There's a bit of wiggle in that. Exact time it hit Yeddaw is unknown, and Kaladin's comment about noon doesn't mean noon exactly. But it should be correct within a couple of hours. So 10.5 hours to cross 80 degrees longitude gives under 48 hours. Less than 2.5 days to circle the planet.

The math is a bit more complicated if you consider the Everstorm travelling a great circle path rather than moving a constant X degrees longitude per hour. But it doesn't yield wildly different results, I think. It's possible that the latitude/longitude numbers I've got are wrong. I'm assuming the map has 180 degrees of latitude and 360 degrees of longitude. They could theoretically use a different unit of angular measure. But one of our other maps has the latitude numbers marked, and I don't think this is the case.

But then... I guess slower speeds over the ocean doesn't have to be inconsistent with that interlude observation I referenced, if their data is based solely on the arrival times at a single location.

Any chance the data the ardents reference is based on one storm from multiple  parts of the continent? Then the storm would not need to always come every (X) days. I would assume that to be the case because the high storms have to work like that otherwise  it would be easy to predict, storm wardens would be out of a job.

Edited by Blacksmithki
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It does seem possible that the "constant speed" could be referencing how long it takes the storm to go from one coast to the other, not the speed it takes to circumnavigate the entire planet. Highstorms are close to predictable but not entirely, so there must be some variable with the ocean that makes the movement hard to pin down exactly. 

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I just stumbled across this and thought I'd add it here

Quote

INTERVIEW: Jan 21st, 2015

ZENBOSSANOVA

This last one I got, was really interesting. I asked about predicting High Storms, because I was thinking of making a Stormwarden manual. I figured if Tolkien started with linguistics because he was a word nerd, then what is a math teacher supposed to do? I asked if knowing the positions/orbits of the moons would be enough to predict the storms.

BRANDON SANDERSON

He said not enough. You need the historical records of storms as well because there is a pattern. You need that pattern and the tides, to correctly predict the timing of the storms. He said it was more than a simple beat. I then turned back and asked, “Are you saying the High Storms are music?” He replied, “I didn’t say they were music. (emphasis on ‘say’). You said that.”

FOOTNOTE

Questioner's speculation: I figured that was better than a denial or RAFO, so I let it drop. I am strongly reminded of the Listeners and their rhythms.

 

It feels like Brandon slipped here and let us know that the Highstorms match one of the Rhythms of Roshar. Likely the one that they all become during the changing.

If this is true, it seems likely that the Everstorm would correspond to a similar beat. Meaning that there is some variance in the short term, but should be predictable long term.

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49 minutes ago, Wreith said:

I just stumbled across this and thought I'd add it here

 

It feels like Brandon slipped here and let us know that the Highstorms match one of the Rhythms of Roshar. Likely the one that they all become during the changing.

If this is true, it seems likely that the Everstorm would correspond to a similar beat. Meaning that there is some variance in the short term, but should be predictable long term.

WoR, I-4 (pg 197 in US Kinde version)

Quote

"So she will try this personally?" Thude asked to the Rhythm of Winds, the rhythm that they used to judge when a highstorm was near.

 

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I'd imagine that winds at or near the Origin have something to do with the slow down, and I would also imagine that clashing with a highstorm while at sea would also slow it down.  Like, I imagine the highstorms and the Everstorm as a kind of very large and very fast moving hurricane.  Thus, they pack a far greater punch than a normal hurricane, but would still be subject to being affected by opposing winds and all that.  Given we know pretty much zero about what lies offshore of the continent, opposing wind patterns or jetstreams would interdict and/or aid the storms depending on direction and time of year seem to me to be the most likely natural explanation.

Other explanations would include the relative effects an Everstorm and a highstorm have on each other (you have to figure they cross each other in the oceans as well as on land after all), whether or not the Stormfather (or some specific voidspren for the Everstorm) have to interact with the storms to recharge them or if they power up if you will by crossing through the Origin (if it really is Honor's shardpool as has been theorized in one or two places, that would help explain how they regain so much force after leaving Shinovar where it's basically just a windy rainstorm) or some other similar feature for the Everstorm.

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  • Argent changed the title to [OB] Everstorm Timing
  • 4 weeks later...

I made this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FRPLWz6JlSLU0dis9L5pv0jd7kvNIIgqu3VUsEQdq5E/edit#gid=154652229

Using this map:

OB_MAP-ROSHAR_ebook.png

I've got a WoP that the second pass hit Urithiru in the morning, and these calculations show it hitting just after noon. I also feel like it's hitting Yeddaw later than described, on the first pass. But this is the best I can figure for now. :)

Edit: Word of Isaac apparently is that the equator is the latitude passing through the northern tip of Kadrix. Too lazy to redo the image here, but that basically just means every latitude shifts two "degrees" further south than what is shown.

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@Ookla the Jof

Quote

Adrotagia nodded, proffering her calculations. “It is nearly here.” People had spent the eight days since the battle vainly hoping that the Everstorm had blown itself out for good. “It’s not as strong as it was during its previous cycle, but it is coming. It has already reached Azir, and should hit Urithiru within the hour.”

 

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Thanks Ex.

Odium being able to move it is something to keep in mind, but all evidence suggests that it USUALLY follows a very strict schedule. (i.e. we've only seen Odium screw with it once, and it seems to have gone back to normal after that)

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