How frequent are Highstorms?

[Oudeis he/him]

There is WoB that Rosharan weeks are five days each, with a month having 50 days. That would mean 10 weeks to a month.

 

In Chapter 19 of WoK, Dalinar comments that it's his 12th vision, that he's only been having them "a few months".

 

Visions always come with Highstorms. So. "A few months" is, what, three months, minimum? Let's say he meant two months and a part of a third. Let's pick 24 weeks, just under two and a half months, cuz it fits nicely. This would mean that one Highstorm comes once ever two weeks. Perhaps a LITTLE bit more frequently, if Dalinar was being inexact. Still, much less frequently than one per week.

 

Kaladin, in Chapter 14 of WoK, mentions that spheres will hold their light for "about a week" Which... actually now I wonder about. Do clips, marks, and broams all hold light for the same amount of time? Doesn't the text during the Weeping belie this theory? Larger gemstones still having some Stormlight when chips have all run out?

 

Regardless. If the average sphere, or even just chips, run out after a week, and Highstorms are not much more frequent than once every two weeks, does literally every chip run out between Highstorms?

 

Shallan comments in the second book that some of her spheres had not been Infused during the most recent storm. Wouldn't that put them at about 3 weeks, triple the length of time a sphere can go without going dun?

 

For that matter... isn't the weeping "four weeks without a highstorm", yet there's one right in the middle? So.... every two weeks, then? So it's not actually much less frequent than highstorms during the year, since at absolute most there'd be two weeks between the final Highstorm and the start of the Weeping, so a four week span, so basically every sphere would appear as though it had missed a single Highstorm.

 

There's something I'm not understanding here. The most obvious thing to say is that when Dalinar said "a  few months" he really meant just one month. Cuz that's more-or-less what he would've had to have meant for Highstorms to come about once a week, as seems to otherwise be the case.

[cem he/him]

We actually were given the dates of all the highstorms during the WoR, except the one Stormfather sent to counter the everstorm, so it's probably much easier to figure out the pattern there.

 

1173090605

1173090801

1173090901

1173091001

1173091004

1173100105

1173100205

1173100401

1173100603

1173100804

 

So numbers of days between these highstorms are:

6-5-5-3-6-5-6-12-11

 

Which tells me nothing, really.

[Oudeis he/him]

This is from the epigraph in the Diagram, yes? I read this, I didn't think it ever flat out said, "these are the dates of highstorms." Does it say this, or do we simply assume?

[king of nowhere]

alll the narrative gives the vague impression gthat highstorms happen roughly once per week on average. the only thing that counters that are a few random statemments from characters that weren't striving for accuracy at the time. It is also possible that brandon missed a bit of mathematics there. Still, once per week on average should be the closer we can get to an accurate count.

[Oudeis he/him]

Eh, I think Dalinar was going for accuracy here. He's trying to count the specific number of visions, and the specific range of time during which it has occurred. These are important details to him, and he gives the impression of striving for accuracy.

 

Still, a valid point. This is an outlier. The Highstorms clearly come something on the order of once every five days, typically. This is a case of Dalinar being wrong, or Mr. Sanderson being wrong (though I can barely bring myself to type the words, while he's amazing he's not infallible), or of simple translation; rather than confuse us by pointing out how much longer a Rosharan month is than an Earth one, he gives us the earth analogue instead.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

I do not believe we have explicit WoB that they are a list of highstorm dates.  But since a chronology of events has been worked out (which I know you've seen since you linked to it in another thread) and the listed dates correspond perfectly with the highstorms, I wouldn't call it an assumption.

 

Edit: There may be something else important about these dates (though I personally doubt it), and that reason may be why they were included in the Diagram, but regardless they are a list of highstorms.

Edited October 24, 2014 by WeiryWriter

[Windrunner he/him]

Well they would be the last ten highstorms prior to the return of the Voidibringers and the Everstorm, which is significant in and of itself.

[Moogle]

Edit: There may be something else important about these dates (though I personally doubt it), and that reason may be why they were included in the Diagram, but regardless they are a list of highstorms.

 

I believe they include even the highstorm that was sped up by the Stormfather, which would mean they were predicting the Everstorm.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

I believe they include even the highstorm that was sped up by the Stormfather, which would mean they were predicting the Everstorm.

 

Unfortunately it does not, the latest date in the list is Ishakev (10-08-04) the everstorm/highstorm combo happens on Ishishach (10-10-03).

[Oudeis he/him]

It's unfortunate that there are not (I don't believe) other sections of the Diagram available to us about the North Wall Coda, Windowsill region, or even from any part of the North Wall Coda, as sections all seemed grouped together. Knowing what else he wrote about in that area could potential steer us towards the significance.

 

I suppose perfectly accurate knowledge of the Highstorms is a laudable enough goal in its own right, with a great deal of utility, but I can't help but think he'd only write these ten dates if there were some even greater secret.

 

There's always another secret...

[StormblessedSurvivor he/him]

I believe an ardent said that the Everstorm goes at a constant speed, unlike the highstorm, which would mean there is no real pace, just, I assume, about once a week

[Subvisual Haze]

I think we're meant to see a connection between The Diagram listing the final highstorm dates and Renarin's powers manifesting during those same highstorms to predict the date of the return of the everstorm.

[HSuperLee he/him]

I think what makes the weepings special is not that it's a particularly long time without highstorms, but that there's a guarantee that there will be no highstorms during the period.

We also know that predicting highstorms is complex enough that many ardents dedicate themselves to trying to work out a pattern, and they're not always right. I would guess this invloves things like measuring wind or specific paths that the storm takes each time. Unless Sanderson decides to grace us with the math of ardents, I guess we might have to be satisfied with the about once a week thing.

[StormblessedSurvivor he/him]

Isn't there one highstorm in the middle of the weeping?

[CrazyRioter she/her]

Every second year there's a highstorm in the middle of the Weeping.

Edited October 23, 2018 by CrazyRioter

[Jace21 he/him]

Dalinar's visions repeat, so even if it had been 3 months since the first vision he could have been on his twelfth, depends if he is counting the repeats or not.

[Stormfather-in-Law]

2014 called. It wants its question back.

[Weltall]

4 hours ago, StormblessedSurvivor said:

I believe an ardent said that the Everstorm goes at a constant speed, unlike the highstorm, which would mean there is no real pace, just, I assume, about once a week

[HSuperLee he/him]

Huh. Well I feel embarrassed now.

[StormblessedSurvivor he/him]

Same

[Scion of the Mists]

Assuming there wasn't a more recent topic about Highstorm frequency, I think that this is the proper place for this, per the forum rules:

Quote

On that same note, don't bring back topics that have been dead forever. This is called thread necromancy (or simply "necroing"). If after a long time you post something new in a topic--one whose discussion has long since ended--that would be thread necroing. We're going to be more lenient about this on the Brandon Sanderson forums, because if you have something to add in the "Mistborn Movie Casting" topic and there hasn't been a post there in a great while, why shouldn't you? You're adding something to the discussion, that's fantastic! A lot of the Books forums will have theory threads, and if you have something to add to them which just perfectly fits the topic, better to revive a dead thread, right?

Thread necroing is only bad in a case like this: let's say Mi'chelle and Josh post in General Discussion saying "We're married!" in a few months. Members will congratulate them, but what you don't want to do is post three months later a congratulation. The sentiment's nice, but at the same time, the news is outdated. Your post is itself outdated, which means it didn't really need to be said. It was superfluous and there was no need for you to post it. Does that make sense? That's why most forums hate thread necromancy, because it's superfluous posting. Essentially, spamming.