Burning Man is waterlogged
The site of Nevada’s famed Burning Man festival is now a giant mud puddle that in some spots is a foot-deep lake.
So some Burners, who hope to buy tickets to the 68,000-person campout that begins Aug. 27, are concerned that the wet conditions could endanger its federal Bureau of Land Management permit. The wild, annual celebration of self-expression and art lasts for a week through Labor Day.
Beforehand, participants build a temporary city in the desert about 90 miles northeast of Reno. Afterward, they tear it down and haul it away, leaving no trace of its previous existence.
It’s not uncommon for the playa to be a soggy sandpit in the late winter, spring and early summer, said Mark Hall, the BLM’s acting Black Rock Field Office manager. But because of the drought-busting wet weather on the West Coast, northern Nevada’s unofficial race track might take a bit longer to dry out.
What the Black Rock won’t be: a new permanent lake.
“That’s why we’re a desert. This is a part of the world where, given the winds, lack of humidity and the like, it is dry,” Hall said.