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By Linda
In September last year Sydney had a fairly severe dust storm in the night. We awoke to a lurid red light which lasted a few hours. The two photos are taken from my house about an hour after sunrise, when the light should have been bright and clear and the sky blue. The pale blobs are the flash hitting the dust in the air.
While it looks rather apocalyptic, bushfires are worse than this - blacker and with vast heat and noise as well. And much more danger.
Still, it gives an idea of what the Blight could look like around Thakan’dar say, or the deep northeastern blight Graendal described, with its rust-coloured light, as Tarmon Gai’don approaches. Not that we have sweltering heat in early spring. Well, not usually!
3 comments:
Amazing pics Linda, and very frightening as well. Far more frightening - because of the ominous light effects and unnatural heat that those imply - than what I remember experiencing back in the Spring of 1980 when Mt. St. Helens had its cataclysmic explosion, with the ash fallout we experienced from that here in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Where I'm at here in Portland, you could see the plume easily, and the ash came after. We were on the benign side (opposite side of the blow) and far enough away, so the effects were far less and quite minimal than what those on the blowout side experienced (and we'd already had ash fallout a few times for several months prior to the big blow from the more "minor" eruptions as well). Still, thinking back, it was a close thing; and if Mt. Hood - which is far far closer to my area - ever blew out like St. Helens did...well it would be like Dragonmount blowing out next to Tar Valon! Heh; nothin' like living within the Pacific Rim of Fire. Tarmon Gai'don anytime you please, and whenever you don't please as well ;p
Thanks for sharing Linda...I think anyway!!
Marcia (previously known as MJJ Sedai, semi-retired Aes Sedai currently hiding out amongst a cell of the Kin somewhere west of the Mountains of Mist...or maybe somewhere within the Mountains of Mist ;p)
And this whole previous rambling of mine reminds me of what prompted me as a result of Linda's amazing Land of Oz dust storm pics to ramble in the first place. That scene of Rand on top of Dragonmount, with Rand looking down into that huge fissure - that potentially cone-building fissure - on a "side" of Dragonmount. It's just like St. Helens. A hole blasted out of the side of the mountain (which is what initially occured on St Helens prior to the big blast, which blew the "entire" side out of the mountain), with magma slowly building a dome through seismic activity, etc. (just what St. Helens did prior to its big blow in 1980, and what it's continued to do since then, rebuilding itself as it were). Has it ever been said or insinuated what side of the mountain that hole is on? Or is TGS the first mention of it?? In other words, does that hole/fissure face Tar Valon?
Marcia (inquiring minds want to know)
Great to hear from you Marcia! :D And thanks for your response.
The dust storm was dramatic and apocalyptic indeed but volcanoes are far more dangerous!
I was in a worse dust storm 27 years ago - it was dark at noon! True TG! Too dark for photos alas!
No one else has gotten close to Dragonmount on screen in the series. We don't know what direction he faced when he looked into the crater. The crater was to his left, the same side as Rand's side wound is. The two wounds - Rand's and Dragonmount's - are linked. As you observe, the volcano has been increasingly active. Just as Rand's wound will play a part in the Last Battle, so I believe the crater will by erupting.
In TGS Bathed in Light, Egwene could see "the broken maw and uppermost peak of the blasted mountainside". Rand earlier referred to the crater as a maw. If the crater was visible from the Hall then it is roughly in the direction of the Tower.
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