Burning Man 2024 experiences devastating rain yet again

Burning Man 2024 tickets don’t sell out but former burners might just be thanking their lucky stars: it rained… again.

Burning Man is having a bit of a rough patch. In 2023, the festival made international headlines when the seemingly impossible happened: rain in Black Rock City, Nevada. Although it seldom rains in the desert, it does rain. Climates all around the world have been witnessing marked shifts due to global warming. The bizarre phenomena of climate change – augmented rainfall in deserts, limited visibility in urban areas due to air pollution, super hurricanes and devastating forest fires, and rising temperatures emanating from the equator outward – are lurid signs of humans tampering with the natural order of our planet.

Shockingly, to the horror of in-flight burners, the improbable happened again in 2024. Due to debilitating rains, which caused the silt of Black Rock’s former lake basin to coagulate, travel into the playa was temporarily halted on Saturday at 7 AM. Burning Man does not begin until Sunday evening when the opening ceremony kicks off the week’s festivities, but most burners travel in advance to be onsite by Saturday. The gate was closed due to the rain until 3:15 PM the same day, whereupon it opened again to recommence ingress.

For over a decade, Burning Man has been a staple, a movement, and an annual celebration for West Coast ravers and incognito corporate tycoons. But it looks as though the reign of Burning Man, promoted as a utopian reprieve from the hustle and bustle of adulthood, did not fully recover from its PR nightmare in 2023. For the first time since 2011, tickets for this year’s burn did not sell out before the event. Tickets are still for sale on Burning Man’s website, which usually touts a strict and shrouded ticket sale process that requires registration, hoping and praying, and random hullabaloo. 

A representative for Burning Man spun the story positively during a CBS MoneyWatch interview. “By opening the OMG Sale to everyone, including those who did not register, and selling tickets for instant gratification at outlets in San Francisco and Reno, we are creating the opportunity for this to ‘be the year’ people interested in creativity, innovation, and culture make it to Black Rock City.” The silver lining is logical, but also avoids the elephant: people would rather not endure a logistics nightmare. A Euro-tour, brat summer sounds like a wonderful alternative.