No Exit: Rains Close the Roads In and Out of Burning Man (rgj.com) 163
Though it's Saturday at Nevada's desert-based Burning Man event "Dawn brought a growing realization for attendees that they might not be going home as planned, given rain forecast for later Saturday into Sunday..." reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. "More than 73,000 Burning Man attendees remain confined to their camps Saturday and are blocked from leaving the event after a slow-moving rainstorm turned their desert playground into a soupy, muddy morass."
Burning Man has now closed both its entrance and exits gates. "Organizers warned attendees to conserve their food and water, indicating the closures could be lengthy." There was no estimated time for reopening, and thousands of attendees are facing the potential of missing flights, failing to return rental cars or failing to return to work Tuesday. The event is set to officially end Monday but many people begin leaving Saturday night or Sunday...
The closures and order to remain in shelter come as the event was supposed reach its zenith on Saturday night with the burning of the giant wooden Man effigy towering over the temporary city. All vehicle traffic within the encampment has been halted, including servicing for the thousands of portable toilets that make the event possible. Organizers have also begun rationing ice sales... Given the conditions, which include forecast rain Sunday, it appears unlikely anyone will be permitted to drive out soon. Burning Man officials have not provided a comprehensive update on conditions, departure timing or even the multiple art burns scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Longtime attendees said they can't remember a burn with this much rain...
Organizers banned vehicle traffic from the roads Friday afternoon and kept the exit gates closed as of 5 a.m. Saturday.
"Many attendees appeared to remain in good spirits, playing beer pong in the muddy streets or splashing in the standing water. Techno continued echoing around the encampment, and spontaneous dance parties kept breaking out."
"Walking was almost impossible Saturday morning, but started to improve as the ground began to dry. Then it began raining again."
Burning Man has now closed both its entrance and exits gates. "Organizers warned attendees to conserve their food and water, indicating the closures could be lengthy." There was no estimated time for reopening, and thousands of attendees are facing the potential of missing flights, failing to return rental cars or failing to return to work Tuesday. The event is set to officially end Monday but many people begin leaving Saturday night or Sunday...
The closures and order to remain in shelter come as the event was supposed reach its zenith on Saturday night with the burning of the giant wooden Man effigy towering over the temporary city. All vehicle traffic within the encampment has been halted, including servicing for the thousands of portable toilets that make the event possible. Organizers have also begun rationing ice sales... Given the conditions, which include forecast rain Sunday, it appears unlikely anyone will be permitted to drive out soon. Burning Man officials have not provided a comprehensive update on conditions, departure timing or even the multiple art burns scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Longtime attendees said they can't remember a burn with this much rain...
Organizers banned vehicle traffic from the roads Friday afternoon and kept the exit gates closed as of 5 a.m. Saturday.
"Many attendees appeared to remain in good spirits, playing beer pong in the muddy streets or splashing in the standing water. Techno continued echoing around the encampment, and spontaneous dance parties kept breaking out."
"Walking was almost impossible Saturday morning, but started to improve as the ground began to dry. Then it began raining again."
Oddities (Score:5, Interesting)
I've lived in CA for more than half a century. Western weather has been really wonky the past 7 or so years. If it's not climate change, then it's a freak coincidence we got back to back oddities.
Re: Oddities (Score:2)
Tulare filled back in the 80s, and has done so regularly for a while. San Diego last got a hurricane in the late 19th century. San Francisco once got almost entirely destroyed by floods. I'm not sure the weather is all that strange; the weather cycles play out over decades.
Statistics (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s funny how people confirm their own bias by looking for oddities in weather patterns.
I see front page news articles about âoewarmest two-day streak in first week of august everâ.
Turned out there were many days with higher temperatures, and hotter two day streaks before and afterwards, and it was in a single weather station in the Netherlands, and the second highest streak was only 0.5 degrees colder, somewhere in the 60s.
You can find oddities and records in weather data all the time.
N
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Narrator: "It was climate change"
Re:Oddities (Score:4, Insightful)
Classic misdirection as you only indicate time and become dismissive of it for a single value.
Zero to sixty miles per hours? Blah, nothing important there. Zero to sixty in one millisecond, oh well suddenly we're talking about something interesting.
In that fifty year period why not also include the CO2 ppm change?
Yeah we can take a single dimension of a measure and make it meaningless easy peasy. Add some context so we can get the full flavor. Give us something to sink our teeth into. Actually try to present data so that we can all be like that Gordon Ramsay meme. "Finally. Some good fucking insightful information on Slashdot." Just shouting "oh, x number of years is nothing compared to y number of years which is orders of magnitude larger!" Yes, thank you for your contribution of the blinding obvious.
Re: Poles burned Moscow (Score:2)
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It's Muscovy that's a made up nation. Varangian traders with slavic forest farmers created Ukraine (then called Rus' natively, Russia in Latin) many hundreds of years before one of their nobles got ejected east and took command of local bandits and local Mongol rejects (rejected mostly for levels of greed and cruelty the Mongols couldn't stand -- the latter tried ruling people they conquered without unnecessary force, which proto-muscovities were the epitome of). And not surprisingly, a few generations la
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"Kiev is the birthplace of the Russian nation" is true only if you take the historical meaning of the word "Russia" -- which excludes Muscovy. And these are not the same people, because Rus' didn't extend that far to the east. There were many disorganized random tribes of various origins, strewn through vast virgin forests to the north and steppes to the south.
I'm not saying that to disparage those tribes -- a common narrative of being a "nation" is not necessary to do anything productive -- and neither d
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The Ukrainians are a made up nation - West Ukrainians are Poles and east Ukrainians are Russians.
Ukraine had roads and multi story buildings when Russians were still trying just not to get frozen in the mud.
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Boo hoo hoo, my internet numbers. Wahh the leftists. Wahhhhhhh the leftists are going to subtract my internet number, gahhhh boo hoo hoo.
You right-wing guys are such embarrassing pussies.
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I believe the "Medieval Warm Period" was mostly in Europe, or at least hasn't been verified to extend beyond it.
It extended to Greenland. The Norse had farms there at the time. They perished when the climate turned colder in the 14th century.
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That's not what post event proxy data from around the world says.
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era
If you have better evidence, let us know.
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arth’s climate history is often understood by breaking it down into constituent climatic epochs1. Over the Common Era (the past 2,000 years) these epochs, such as the Little Ice Age have been characterized as having occurred at the same time across extensive spatial scales. Although the rapid global warming seen in observations over the past 150 years does show nearly global coherence, the spatiotemporal coherence of climate epochs earlier in the Common Era has yet to be robustly tested. Here we use global palaeoclimate reconstructions for the past 2,000 years, and find no evidence for preindustrial globally coherent cold and warm epochs. In particular, we find that the coldest epoch of the last millennium—the putative Little Ice Age—is most likely to have experienced the coldest temperatures during the fifteenth century in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, during the seventeenth century in northwestern Europe and southeastern North America, and during the mid-nineteenth century over most of the remaining regions. Furthermore, the spatial coherence that does exist over the preindustrial Common Era is consistent with the spatial coherence of stochastic climatic variability. This lack of spatiotemporal coherence indicates that preindustrial forcing was not sufficient to produce globally synchronous extreme temperatures at multidecadal and centennial timescales. By contrast, we find that the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the twentieth century for more than 98 per cent of the globe. This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic global warming is not only unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures, but also unprecedented in spatial consistency within the context of the past 2,000 years.
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That isn't what I was saying. I was saying the opposite. I was writing in response to your saying, "Heat energy was redistributed".
The point I was trying to make was that the MWP wasn't a simultaneous worldwide event.
From Wikipedia, as I can quickly grab text without lots of typing:
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from c.950 to c.1250. Climate proxy records show peak warmth occurred at different times for different regions, which indicate that the MWP was not a globally uniform event.
My emphasis.
In other words, if you have an area that had a peak period of warming at one point not at the same time as another, then it must have cooled while other areas were warming. Does that make more sense?
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So I built a third one. (Score:5, Funny)
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Burning Man, I hear that is good pig country
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Drowning Man?
It's a dry lake bed (Score:5, Informative)
They hold their party in a dry lake bed. This year, a year where the weather has been, quite frankly, a little extreme, the lake decided to attend. Shrugging emoji.
Lake Lahontin (Score:3, Informative)
They hold their party in a dry lake bed. This year, a year where the weather has been, quite frankly, a little extreme, the lake decided to attend. Shrugging emoji.
To be fair, Lake Lahontin [wikipedia.org] dried up 9,000 years ago.
Or should humanity have waited a little longer?
Re:Lake Lahontin (Score:5, Interesting)
Dry lake beds and river courses are candidates for flooding when there's an unusual amount of rain. It does seem like holding an event with 70K+ people in what is essentially a giant flood basin waiting to be filled up is indeed a "bad idea".
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Re: Lake Lahontin (Score:2)
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So is Wacken Open Air, in Germany.
And incidentally, that was a mud pit this year too, but at least there's permanent infrastructure in the area.
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It's not as if you can know in advance though...
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Dry lake beds and river courses are candidates for flooding when there's an unusual amount of rain. It does seem like holding an event with 70K+ people in what is essentially a giant flood basin waiting to be filled up is indeed a "bad idea".
*looks at New Orleans*
*looks at Hurricane Katrina history*
*looks at New Orleans*
Guess I'm not seeing the evidence that humans hold the capacity to grasp your concept...
Re: Lake Lahontin (Score:3)
Guess I'm not seeing the evidence that humans hold the capacity to grasp your concept...
We're famously good at making decisions that we know with certainty are Bad Ideas. Hold my beer.
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waiting to be filled
That's hyperbole. No one is drowning. A few people are getting their feet wet and the road is a bit too muddy to pull their campers, that is it. Want to know why this is news? Because we've successfully run this event for 40 years without someone getting their feet wet incident.
This place is a desert for a reason. 100s of millions of people live in far higher risk conditions than these festival goers who are being mildly inconvenienced. Calling it a "bad idea" is just silly.
Re:Lake Lahontin (Score:5, Informative)
Rain and areal flooding is not particularly unusual in that basin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Lake Lahontin (Score:4, Interesting)
They hold their party in a dry lake bed. This year, a year where the weather has been, quite frankly, a little extreme, the lake decided to attend. Shrugging emoji.
To be fair, Lake Lahontin [wikipedia.org] dried up 9,000 years ago.
Or should humanity have waited a little longer?
As with investing, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
Renamed "Burning Mud" (Score:2)
Burning Man is now renamed "Burning Mud"
Food, water... drugs (Score:5, Funny)
Organizers warned attendees to conserve their food and water
Food and water, sure, but what if they run out of DRUGS?
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Organizers warned attendees to conserve their food and water
Food and water, sure, but what if they run out of DRUGS?
Also, the problem is that it's literally raining. Open your water bottle and hold it outside for more water.
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That's probably not a working plan in itself, but one thing about burning man is that there's a lot of tarpage. If they can't build water collectors, they deserve to go thirsty.
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Ya, that is the logical extension of my comment/joke...
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Food and water, sure, but what if they run out of DRUGS?
I know you mean illicit drugs, but prescription medications are a real concern. 14% of the adult population in the US is diabetic, for example. Now, not all of those need to take insulin, and there's probably a self-selection bias that might make people with diabetes less likely to go and camp out in the desert in the first place. Still, even if we cut that down to say 4%, that would be about 3000 diabetics who may need insulin. That's just one medical condition. There may be many more affecting members of
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Most diabetes sufferers are not insulin dependent. For the rest, if they are starving, they won't need those insulin meds. More likely, they will be needing sugar.
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speak for yourself. I increase the longer I fast without insulin.
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It's a large enough percentage of them that I would still expect north of a 1000 people in a crowd that size to need insulin.
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Most diabetes sufferers are not insulin dependent. For the rest, if they are starving, they won't need those insulin meds. More likely, they will be needing sugar.
It's a little more complicated than that. Many need to inject basal insulin every day, regardless of whether any food is eaten at all. Then, at each meal there is rapid-acting insulin, the kind you are more familiar with.
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Food and water, sure, but what if they run out of DRUGS?
Some rich guys are going to get more airdropped for them, don't worry.
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It's drug free. At the end after everyone is out.
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as drug arrests remain remarkably low.
What a coincidence! Seattle must be drug free as well.
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The official stance of burning man is that the event is a drug free, legal, congregation. The police that serve as security seem to agree, as drug arrests remain remarkably low.
(Reality) "I cannot even imagine how high those cops are..."
Funny (Score:2)
Things to be grateful for (Score:2)
For the record, I wanted to go this year but missed out on the ticket lottery.
Sooooo glad for that right now.
There are a lot of things to be grateful for today. One of those things is that you’re not at Burning Man. pic.twitter.com/YeqzzRxAxR
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 2, 2023
(Also for the record, I was there during Katrina. Continuous strong winds with tremendous gusts blowing tents and structures across the playa. That wa
Re: Things to be grateful for (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: High winds (Score:3)
As of the 08/31/2005 start of Burning Man, Katrina was barely holding on to its tropical depression status. "At 11:00 PM EDT (0300 UTC), the National Hurricane Center announced that the center of the remnant low of what was Hurricane Katrina had been completely absorbed by a frontal boundary in southeastern Canada, with no discernible circulation."
So way further away than 2000 miles, and failing to sustain 38mph winds at that.
Day passes (Score:2)
For me, if I lost the ticket lottery I'd have a ticket. I might want to go to gawp, I suppose. For an hour or two at most.
IIRC, You can get day passes to enter the city.
Problem is that it's an art festival and there's a ton of art exhibits that are interesting and amazing, so an hour or two won't do it. The open center section containing the art is something like 2 miles across, so in "an hour or two" you will only get to see four or five exhibits.
Also, some of the art is performance, so during the weekend there are all sorts of bands and singers playing at center camp, blues competitions in neighboring tents, and so on.
I've been thru the desert on a horse with no name (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: I've been thru the desert on a horse with no n (Score:3)
In the desert, you can remember your name.
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Cuz there ain't no one to give you no pain.
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Ba daa ba da da daa
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(I agree, they could have written it better.)
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But I remember the rains in Africa
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Still, It Never Rains in Southern California.
Oh, wait...
Poor enviroprotesters (Score:3)
https://thehill.com/policy/ene... [thehill.com]
They tried to warn everyone. Didn't work.
(lol)
Re:Poor enviroprotesters (Score:5, Insightful)
Burning Man used to be a counter culture festival where people could shoot off full auto weapons and blow up whatever you wanted. The rules were simple. If the above bothers you then don’t go. You will also be in the desert in August. If you don’t bring provisions then you will die. That covered the rules.
Now celebrities show up in million dollar motor homes.
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Now celebrities show up in million dollar motor homes.
Hopefully, the million dollar price included the all-wheel-drive option.
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Doesn't work if it's quicksand...
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https://sherpatvsales.com/ [sherpatvsales.com]
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Burning Man used to be a counter culture festival where people could shoot off full auto weapons and blow up whatever you wanted.
Yeah, it's been senseless since the cops started showing up in significant numbers, but people keep going despite the fact that it's over.
Re: Poor enviroprotesters (Score:2)
Sadly, a sign of times⦠the counter culture now is stick to the rules and make even more rules based on nothing but individual preferences and ideology, and then enforce them on everybody.
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Sadly, a sign of times⦠the counter culture now is stick to the rules and make even more rules based on nothing but individual preferences and ideology, and then enforce them on everybody.
I would imagine one of original drivers of Burning Man, was a disconnect from all the rules and limits of "society". An escape. And that was fine. In reasonable numbers.
The only "sign of the times" everyone seems to overlook, is the very reason societies find a very need to establish rules; with great volume, comes great responsibility.
Humans are fucking animals otherwise. Strip every current rule away from the current volume attending Burning Man and dare to prove that point.
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I would imagine one of original drivers of Burning Man, was a disconnect from all the rules and limits of "society". An escape. And that was fine. In reasonable numbers.
There's the rub. There should not be such a large festival to begin with. What's needed is more regional festivals.
My lady, who used to go to burning man regularly, hasn't gone in a bunch of years as it jumped the shark some time ago. But what she often says she wants to see is the antithesis to BM, e.g. "Growing Woman" — a regionalized festival where instead of building a temple and burning it down the goal is to construct something of value which persists. You could for example have a festival where
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a regionalized festival where instead of building a temple and burning it down the goal is to construct something of value which persists.
If that were to be anywhere in Europe, I'd attend.
I like the idea of Burning Man. I didn't like that it grew to the size it did. Never understood the appeal of music festivals with 100,000+ people either. Why are you there if you're a mile from the stage?
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Burning Man used to be a counter culture festival where people could shoot off full auto weapons and blow up whatever you wanted. The rules were simple. If the above bothers you then don’t go. You will also be in the desert in August. If you don’t bring provisions then you will die. That covered the rules.
Speaking of rules, I just can't imagine why they stopped allowing a few thousand hippies fucked out of their minds on booze and drugs to continue shooting full auto weapons and blow up whatever they wanted.
After all, only rich people can afford them now, so there should be plenty of money pouring out of million dollar motor homes for ammo.
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Yep. Ironically all they had to do to let people at burning man know about the dangers of climate change was nothing.
Refreshing change (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to see some feel-good stories on slashdot once in a while.
Libertarian paradise (Score:2, Informative)
You all know Burning Man is a libertarian paradise with no laws as each person going Galt and being self sufficient for a few days, right?
The national guard has been called in. All these libertarians are now getting assistance from the federal government.
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BM hasn't been libertarian anything for a loooong time. It's just a really expensive drug party for the elite to let loose.
Somehow burying your million-dollar motorhome axle-deep in a mud pit surrounded by people fucked out of their minds in the middle of nowhere, doesn't exactly scream "status" at those $10,000/plate dinner parties.
I can think of a lot better ways the elite can blow money and check off boxes.
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They got time, money, and are in desperate need of high impact stimulation so they party hard, take lots of drugs and watch their million dollar vehicle sink into the mud but are too stupid to leave when the rains first started.
Something tells me if you're that hell bent on having a good time, you were never going to leave no matter what.
Reminds me a lot of the former hosts of the worst examples of Hurricane parties. They're all dead now of course.
Better ration antibiotics too. (Score:2)
I hope none of the burning man attendees recently completed a Tough Mudder in, uh, neighbouring California.
Well, what do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
If you keep offering big burning sacrifices to the gods, they at last will hear you and send you the rain.
At the event right now (Score:3)
I'm on playa right now. While things are definitely different, the media's making a much bigger deal of this than it actually is. The rain primarily fell on Friday and Saturday, with the result being that the weekend burners couldn't make it in - most folks weren't trying to leave, a few panicked folks aside.
Frankly, the worst part is that the portos are low on TP, but otherwise there's no real shortage of supplies for survival OR recreation. People are still partying, the bass speakers are still shaking the ground, and people are still out having fun.
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Wait - is that you choosing to use the technical term, or is that a technical term that has been retrofitted as a placename?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playa -
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But ... but ... (Score:2)
Soylent green anyone? (Score:2)
RussFest (Score:2)
If you really want to know ... (Score:2)
Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City's Alternative Newspaper
by Adrian Roberts (Editor)
Will Cause Problems in Silicon Valley (Score:2)
New name: (Score:2)
Drowning Man.
history repeats (Score:3)
Burning Man is the Woodstock experience for kids suffering from boomer envy. Finally, the same thing has happened as happened at Woodstock. Mission accomplished.
Hovercraft (Score:2)
Re: Too cheap to arrive in style (Score:2)