Fire and ice: Burning Man's wild weather history

Extreme weather, ranging from feet of mud to intense dust storms, have thrown a curve ball at the thousands of people who gather in the Nevada desert for Burning Man.

Another year, another Burning Man. The late-summer desert festival in Nevada dates back to the 1980s in San Francisco, where founders burned an 8-foot-tall wooden man on the beach drawing a whopping crowd of 35.

Much has changed since then, and more than 70,000 people are expected to attend Burning Man 2024 in Black Rock City. The annual event, running from Aug. 25 to Sept. 2, is already off to an interesting start after a big dip in the jet stream resulted in eager 'Burners' contending with wind and highs only in the low 70s on opening Sunday.

Burning Man runs a temporary weather station at Burning Man Airport at 4,300 feet, a testament to how many people come to this barren landscape every year.

In this piece, we'll examine some of the most wild weather at Burning Man, beginning with the event everyone remembers the most: the wild weather that hit the festival last year.

2023 monsoonal deluge

The North American monsoon brings the Desert Southwest much-needed afternoon showers and thunderstorms during peak summer heat months. But sometimes, too much rain can fall at once. This is what happened during Burning Man 2023, when about two to three months of rain fell in the span of one weekend, leading to a parade of stranded revelers and vehicles and a whole bunch of muddy vibes. The heavy rain came less than a month after Hurricane Hilary drenched the region.

Attendees were told to shelter in place and conserve their food and water. With everything turned into a mud pit, the cavalcade of RVs, SUVs and celebs such as Diplo and Chris Rock wasn't going anywhere. All told, "only" about 0.8 of an inch of rain during a 24-hour period, with additional rain the next day, but the desert’s clay could not absorb water as quickly as fertile soil, leading to rapid flash flooding. Poetically, a double rainbow loomed over the festival as the skies started to clear.

2001 dust storm

The West was very dry in 2001 leading up to Burning Man. According to NOAA, Nevada had the fifth driest May in 2001, with other bone-dry months as well. The lack of precipitation was compounded by higher-than-normal evaporation due to high temperatures. The result was a huge amount of dust at Burning Man 2001.

During the winter at the Burning Man location that year, the playa, the dried lakebed that Black Rock City is built on, typically freezes over. When warmer weather comes, it thaws out, in part due to spring rain. But that rain never came. Instead Burners were met with a layer of dust an inch or more thick to wade through. Ultimately, a dust cloud from incoming vehicles completely engulfed the Burning Man site. This explains the famous goggles and bandanas that Burners don.

2015 cold snap

Burners in 2015 dealt with a trifecta of high winds up to 45 miles per hour, sustained dust storms and temperatures approaching freezing. Temperatures in colder valleys near the site were predicted to plummet to the middle to upper 20s. Some stalwart Burners admitted going back to camp early because they couldn't brave the weather while others thought about improving the insulation in their tents. This was all the result of a cool, dry air mass that dipped through the region that summer.

2022 scorcher

Burning Man 2022 started hot and finished hotter. The first Monday of the festival posted a high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit. By the weekend, the heat wave peaked at a record-setting 103 F. Similar to other desert fêtes like Coachella, traffic going to and from Burning Man already tests tempers. However, the eight-hour wait times to leave the grounds made these temperatures all the more dangerous. Add to it, a popular nearby gas station ran out of fuel.

That summer, AccuWeather meteorologists observed that humidity and the North American monsoon helped to keep temperatures somewhat manageable for much of the season. But then came late August, and the building of truly dangerous heat. AccuWeather meteorologists said those temperatures were more typical of July than late August or early September. This was all the result of a high pressure system that parked over the West, sending warm weather all the way up to the Canadian cities of Calgary and Saskatoon.