No Storms in the Stormlands

[John Suburbs]

Just musing through the tome, and I noticed that the stormlands are supposed to be wracked with storms every autumn. Like storms on the east coast U.S., they form in warm waters, gather strength at sea, and then slam into land before racing north.

 

And yet this autumn, which ought to be a doozy considering the long summer and the supposedly long winter that is coming, the only major storm to hit the mainland came from the north, while all the weather happening out at sea, namely to Samwell and Tyrion, don't seem to have hit Westeros at all.

 

It seems odd that if weather patterns were to break for completely natural reasons it would happen this fall of all falls.

 

 

[aryagonnakill#2]

Didn't the Golden Companies fleet get scattered by a storm when they sailed into the Stormlands?

 

Edit:  Also maybe a setup for the Redwyn fleet going down.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Considering that we are inside the Stormlands exactly twice (Cat/Davos in Clash and JonCon in Dance) and both times we experience storms (the one stalling Stannis' fleet on their way to the Blackwater and the several ones scattering the Golden Company all over the Stormlands), the Stormlands are indeed pretty stormwrecked.

[John Suburbs]

Yeah, there were some storms out to sea, but the World Book describes hurricanes that smash into the stormlands and then ravage everything to the north, much the way they do on the east coast U.S. But considering that were are coming off a long summer and heading into a long winter, I would expect this weather pattern to really ramp up. But we don't hear of any storms, even moderate ones, crossing the stormlands and certainly nothing in Kings Landing, the crownlands, the reach or the vale -- only one major storm that caused a lot of flooding coming from the completely opposite direction. I guess weather is just unpredictable like that sometimes.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Who should tell us? Apart from those two short instances, there is no PoV inside the Stormlands. Nor even particularly close to them.

[John Suburbs]

A hurricane wouldn't just stop at the stormlands, though. Kings Landing would be direct in its path, as well as Brienne and Pod, and even Sansa and LF would note a weakened hurricane racing by. Plus there would at least be reports of storms raging through part of the realm, falling trees, wrecked villages, tidal surges...

 

The stormlands aren't called the stormlands just because of rain and high winds. The storms tear the place apart every autumn, except this one apparently.

 

But you could be right. Maybe it's just nothing.

[Fat Mac]

I'd chalk it up to George not being a meteorologist. But on Earth, hurricanes build up over thousands of miles of warm ocean then hit and survive a few thousand miles on land. For the Stormlands this can't be the case since the Narrow Sea isn't wide enough to produce a massive hurricane. Its just too narrow a body of water for a storm to build up hurricane-like power. Therefore, if they do have what we know as hurricanes, they are likely much smaller, and disappate shortly after making landfall and as such wouldn't make it to King's Landing or anywhere past the Stormlands as a storm of any note.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

It's unlikely that the Stormlands got any hurricanes. Just your average European storm, which would loose force somewhere in the Kingswood or the Dornish Marches.

[Mrs.Grumpy]

I'd chalk it up to George not being a meteorologist. But on Earth, hurricanes build up over thousands of miles of warm ocean then hit and survive a few thousand miles on land. For the Stormlands this can't be the case since the Narrow Sea isn't wide enough to produce a massive hurricane. Its just too narrow a body of water for a storm to build up hurricane-like power. Therefore, if they do have what we know as hurricanes, they are likely much smaller, and disappate shortly after making landfall and as such wouldn't make it to King's Landing or anywhere past the Stormlands as a storm of any note.

Or Magic!!!!

[Fat Mac]

Or Magic!!!!

Ok, fair enough :p

[John Suburbs]

I'd chalk it up to George not being a meteorologist. But on Earth, hurricanes build up over thousands of miles of warm ocean then hit and survive a few thousand miles on land. For the Stormlands this can't be the case since the Narrow Sea isn't wide enough to produce a massive hurricane. Its just too narrow a body of water for a storm to build up hurricane-like power. Therefore, if they do have what we know as hurricanes, they are likely much smaller, and disappate shortly after making landfall and as such wouldn't make it to King's Landing or anywhere past the Stormlands as a storm of any note.

 

It's unlikely that the Stormlands got any hurricanes. Just your average European storm, which would loose force somewhere in the Kingswood or the Dornish Marches.

 

 That's not the way it's described in the World Book. Every autumn, without fail, the storms smash into the coast and then race northward through the realm. I could see where they would dissipate if they headed for the Red Mountains, but north across the Kingswood and then Blackwater Bay there is nothing to stop them. It just seems to me that someone would have at least noticed fast-moving clouds or something.

[aryagonnakill#2]

There were huge rainstorms in the Riverlands during the fall, they delayed Robb getting to the Twins.  We had no POV in the Stormlands at the time.

[John Suburbs]

Those rains came out of the north. They are the same ones that blew over Bran and Co. in the Queen's Tower. They dumped all that water into the tributaries of the Forks and the Trident, which cause the flooding downstream. If they came up from the south they would have been noticed in King's Landing, and the flooding would have been lessened because most of the water would have been dumped on the flatlands of the Reach and the Crownlands where the rivers are already at their widest.

[Darkstream]

A hurricane wouldn't just stop at the stormlands, though.

Wouldn't it stop at Storms End, is that not how it got its name? I thought that the storms came across Shipbreaker bay and dissipated on the northern coast of the bay. Kings Landing would be an extremely vast distance for a storm to travel inland.

[John Suburbs]

Well, that would be unusual in itself if a storm originating in the Summer Isles crossed the Narrow Sea and then suddenly dissipated as soon as it hit land. Considering that this doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, I would think the maesters would have a tough time writing it off as a purely natural phenomenon.

 

But I think Storm's End refers to its ability to withstand storms rather than defeat them. The World Book says that the rest of the region has no major cities or towns precisely because of all the storms that tear through every half decade or so. And since it is also unlikely that a storm would suddenly vanish the moment it hit an imaginary line on a map, it stands to reason that any truly destructive storm that hit the Stormlands would also drive north and at least produce some sort of noticeable weather in KL or elsewhere in the area.

 

Melisandre claimed to provide the fair winds that got Stannis to the Wall in record time, mayhaps she was holding back the normal autumnal storms while on Dragonstone. They would have really mucked up the assault on King's Landing, after all.

[Darkstream]

Well, that would be unusual in itself if a storm originating in the Summer Isles crossed the Narrow Sea and then suddenly dissipated as soon as it hit land. Considering that this doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, I would think the maesters would have a tough time writing it off as a purely natural phenomenon.

But I think Storm's End refers to its ability to withstand storms rather than defeat them. The World Book says that the rest of the region has no major cities or towns precisely because of all the storms that tear through every half decade or so. And since it is also unlikely that a storm would suddenly vanish the moment it hit an imaginary line on a map, it stands to reason that any truly destructive storm that hit the Stormlands would also drive north and at least produce some sort of noticeable weather in KL or elsewhere in the area.

Yeah, I was thinking of the first paragraph of the Stormlands section where it said:

"...as they [storms] cross the waters of Shipbreaker Bay before slamming into Storm's End on Durran's point. It is from these great gales that the stormlands take their name."

But yeah, no mention of the storms actually stopping there, and I must have read it as Storm's End, not Stormlands taking it's name from the gales. :dunce:

As for the bolded, I would disagree, all large storms coming in from the sea, such as hurricanes and the like would significantly lose strength and rapidly dissipate as they start to travel inland.

And obviously, I don't mean an imaginary line on a map or that the storm is just going to vanish.
It would hit the coast line and start to dissipate.

I would think kingslanding would be to far across the main land to really feel any substantial effect of a storm coming in from Shipbreaker Bay.

Any storms traveling up the coast would follow Massey's hook and cross the Blackwater bay with minimal effect on Kingslanding as it's quite sheltered and in a small bay within the Blackwater itself.

[John Suburbs]

That's almost a due north trajectory from Storm's End, however. So we would have to assume that they would hit the Stormlands from the southeast (otherwise, Dorne would get it first) and then cut due north from there. Certainly possible, but not every storm would follow the same path, so some of them would invariably track inland, across the Kingswood and over the Blackwater to at least roil the clouds or kick up some winds in KL. But there is no hint of even a drop of rain anywhere in the region for the entire season -- not in KL, anyway. And I'm also assuming that the energy released by the rapid transition from a long summer to a long winter would produce storms that are larger and more severe than usual -- generational storms. 

 

One possible explanation:  Brienne gets some weather on Crackclaw and Sam gets rough seas on the way to Braavos, as does Saalador. Perhaps the entire weather pattern just shifted north? Maybe drawn that way by the fair winds the Mel supposedly conjured on Dragonstone? But again, that would be the result of magical manipulation of the weather, not a natural event.