Inside the unprecedented weather complications affecting the 2024 music festival season

The weather has been a formidable factor for festivals this year.

The unprecedented weather complications have acutely affected the 2024 music festival season. For any festival-goer, the word delay has always been feared, especially when it’s days leading up to the event. Campgrounds, venues, and the very experience of festivals have been ravaged by unexpected severe weather these past few months.

Even in this past month, festival organizers have found themselves frantically looking for solutions to keep people safe and to keep the festival happening. Particularly, Elements Music & Arts Festival has made headlines for extreme winds and heavy downpours. Organizers lept into action as they opened doors to provide shelter to those who had already arrived at the campgrounds.

In May, with summer peaking around the corner, Movement Detroit was forced to halt the start of the festival weekend due to hellacious winds. Reaching 17 miles per hour, the Michigan festival had no choice but to put safety first. Eventually, organizers allowed guests to reenter, but the weather sure made its mark.

The month before that in April, Texas Eclipse Festival had to make a similar decision. With the potential for tornadic winds, hail, and thunderstorms, organizers were left with no choice but to cancel the whole event early. Clearly, recent festival weekend forecasts have been detrimental to the many hopes of an exciting music-filled weekend.

Even John Summit, in the early months of 2024, suffered the loss of his highly-anticipated Lake Tahoe record label event due to unprecedented weather conditions. In his case, shockingly, winds met upwards of 70 miles per hour – just a little too strong to enjoy the music in an outdoor setting. The DJ took to X, formerly Twitter, to announce this urgent cancellation. 

While there were a multitude of festival weekends wrecked by weather, there are a couple of themes to note during this 2024 festival season cycle. Firstly, without social media acting as a conduit of information, many festivalgoers would be in greater danger. Secondly, the weather has proven to be a formidable force in the face of festival planning – all one can do is hope the weather will change and make the best out of every situation.

Featured image source Facebook/Movement Detroit

About The Author

Jack Newman

Like many others, I often dive into a variety of music genres and explore, as best I can, what resonates while I listen. For me, EDM is a dense subset of music with unique artistry and textured sounds – a facet of melody and tune that I will always investigate.

See author's posts