How bad would a Highstorm damage an Earth City?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Here's a hypothesis, let's say that a regular city from Earth from Earth got hit by a Highstorm, how bad would the damage be?

Would the city stay standing relatively unscathed, would it be completely blown apart or something in between?

I just want a rough guesstimate.

For a more specific example, how bad would it be on a port city like, say, Boston?

[alder24]

14 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Here's a hypothesis, let's say that a regular city from Earth from Earth got hit by a Highstorm, how bad would the damage be?

Would the city stay standing relatively unscathed, would it be completely blown apart or something in between?

I just want a rough guesstimate.

For a more specific example, how bad would it be on a port city like, say, Boston?

Depending on the type of buildings and the area we're talking about. Take Europe for example. Most old buildings will likely collapse as they aren't built to withstand those weathers - their roofs would fly and this would damage the entire structure, which might survive the first few Highstorms. Dense and high infrastructure would dampen the effects of Highstorm, but high buildings will be more damaged by strong winds and debris, more prone to collapse. Modern buildings built with steel and reinforced concrete would likely be fine, but still suffer a high amount of damage inside. Flying debris would cause much more problems than on Roshar, as everything will go up and it would cause the majority of damage. 

I think the first Highstorm could be very devastating, but many structures would be left standing (mostly without roofs). However people will have no time to rebuild before the next Highstorm comes and it will slowly grind a city to the ground. Older buildings would be destroyed first, and debris from it would  damage modern, more studier structures.

A port city would  be damaged even more as hurricane causes water to rise and flood. It would be very bad, as not only wind is carrying debris, but now water as well in a powerful wave, flooding and weakening foundations of buildings. 

[therunner he/him]

It would be worse than even Category 5 Hurricane, much worse.

Hurricanes have forward speed typically in low tens of mph, and sustained winds in ~100 mphs.

Highstorm has just forward speed at ~370 mph. It rips and carries large trees for hundreds of miles, and rips boulders from earth.
If anything Highstorm is more like hurricane size tornado. So the devastation would be huge.

[Guest]

The closest historical example I could find for 300+ mph winds is the 1999 Bridge Creek-Moore tornado which conveniently (for this question not for the victims) went through Oklahoma City. It flattened basically everything so I would guess that no city would stand up well at all. 

[Quantus he/him]

19 minutes ago, therunner said:

It would be worse than even Category 5 Hurricane, much worse.

Hurricanes have forward speed typically in low tens of mph, and sustained winds in ~100 mphs.

Highstorm has just forward speed at ~370 mph. It rips and carries large trees for hundreds of miles, and rips boulders from earth.
If anything Highstorm is more like hurricane size tornado. So the devastation would be huge.

Worse even.  The Tornado scale tops out at 318 MPH for the top F5 tornados.  So it would be worse that any tornado Earth has seen in modern history, and the size of a country.  It would level the landscape and destroy nearly all plant plant-life.  There's a reason Rosharan flora is coral-like and withdraws into stone shelters during Highstorms.  

[Firesong she/her]

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

Depending on the type of buildings and the area we're talking about. Take Europe for example. Most old buildings will likely collapse as they aren't built to withstand those weathers - their roofs would fly and this would damage the entire structure, which might survive the first few Highstorms. Dense and high infrastructure would dampen the effects of Highstorm, but high buildings will be more damaged by strong winds and debris, more prone to collapse. Modern buildings built with steel and reinforced concrete would likely be fine, but still suffer a high amount of damage inside. Flying debris would cause much more problems than on Roshar, as everything will go up and it would cause the majority of damage. 

I think the first Highstorm could be very devastating, but many structures would be left standing (mostly without roofs). However people will have no time to rebuild before the next Highstorm comes and it will slowly grind a city to the ground. Older buildings would be destroyed first, and debris from it would  damage modern, more studier structures.

A port city would  be damaged even more as hurricane causes water to rise and flood. It would be very bad, as not only wind is carrying debris, but now water as well in a powerful wave, flooding and weakening foundations of buildings. 

Yeah, Roshar is really only able to survive via building settlements in areas protected by storms, laits and breakwalls and mountainsides, and still tend to not have the most pleasant time. 

Earth has no such need to carefully choose places resistant to storms, thus we would not deal as well. But as you said, modern steel infrastructure would also be able to resist it more than most Rosharan buildings. But very tall buildings would not deal with it as well, as the taller they get, the more such gale-force winds would effect them. Heck, even normal wind velocities are rather strong near the tops of very tall skyscrapers, to the extent that it actually requires some pretty impressive engineering to make it stay stiff and firm, and not bend or snap under the winds. It is one of several reasons that skyscrapers aren't build even higher, it just gets harder and harder the higher you get (but ofc, there are many, many more reasons, but this is one of them)

Overall, yeah, we wouldn't do too swell. And Roshar would not be able to reach our type of cities, or our freedom in where we can build settlements, unless something happens to the Highstorm. Which I bet it will given something is gonna happen with Honor and such, and we know Roshar is likely going to be very important in Era 4, and I doubt they would be able to reach the space age if they have to keep themselves limited to specific geographic areas. 

[Treamayne]

Part of this equation is which cities. I know you gave Boston as an example, but what I mean is compare:

• Hurricane Katrina - a Cat 5 Hurricane that was (high) Cat 3 when making (second) landfall caused about 1400 fatalities and over 97 billion in damages to the affected gulf region
• Typhoon Sinlaku - a Cat 5 Typhoon that was a (high) Cat 3 when making landfall over the RyuKyu islands (Okinawa) and continuing to Taiwan and China caused zero deaths in Okinawa,  two deaths in Taiwan and 28 in China; as well as about 14 million in damage to Okinawa and another 709 million in damage in China. 

Of course, comparisons have so many contributing metrics - but (having been in Okinawa for Sinlaku), to me the biggest factor is because that region of the Pacific builds for these types of storms (for example, near Kadena - on and off base - almost all buildings are rebar reinforced concrete), and the gulf learned the hard way what failing to build to storm specifications can cause (though New Orleans has other factors, like being below sea level). 

If "cheap" storm shelters like the bridgemen barracks were not ripped apart, then I think modern Storm Specification built concrete structures would survive**. High rise buildings will have a bad time of it, not to mention any places vulnerable to flooding. 

TLDR: I guess my point is that you can't really generalize to "any Earth city" or even "any port city" and get meaningful data. It's better to say X environment would likely suffer y results from such a storm. 

 

Edit Note: Forgot my asterisk anecdote from above:

Spoiler

Sometimes weird things can still happened. I worked through Sinlaku (almost three days) and when I returned to my barracks (mortared concrete blocks rather than poured concrete walls) I discovered that there must have been a small crack in the mortar because the winds and rain had been strong enough to collapse the drop ceiling on my bed. In fact, enough water entered through the 1 inch crack that it flooded my ceiling, soaked through the bed, soaked through the floor and damaged the ceiling of the room below mine. . . 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by Treamayne
Note

[Firesong she/her]

16 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Part of this equation is which cities. I know you gave Boston as an example, but what I mean is compare:

• Hurricane Katrina - a Cat 5 Hurricane that was (high) Cat 3 when making (second) landfall caused about 1400 fatalities and over 97 billion in damages to the affected gulf region
• Typhoon Sinlaku - a Cat 5 Typhoon that was a (high) Cat 3 when making landfall over the RyuKyu islands (Okinawa) and continuing to Taiwan and China caused zero deaths in Okinawa,  two deaths in Taiwan and 28 in China; as well as about 14 million in damage to Okinawa and another 709 million in damage in China. 

Of course, comparisons have so many contributing metrics - but (having been in Okinawa for Sinlaku), to me the biggest factor is because that region of the Pacific builds for these types of storms (for example, near Kadena - on and off base - almost all buildings are rebar reinforced concrete), and the gulf learned the hard way what failing to build to storm specifications can cause (though New Orleans has other factors, like being below sea level). 

If "cheap" storm shelters like the bridgemen barracks were not ripped apart, then I think modern Storm Specification built concrete structures would survive*. High rise buildings will have a bad time of it, not to mention any places vulnerable to flooding. 

TLDR: I guess my point is that you can't really generalize to "any Earth city" or even "any port city" and get meaningful data. It's better to say X environment would likely suffer y results from such a storm. 

Totally true, yeah. You can't just generalize these things.