Burning Man is having deja vu of 2023. Simply 2 years after Black Rock Metropolis was in an emergency state, Mom Nature appears to be again once more. Attendees this 12 months are already going through mud storms and heavy rain because the competition opened.
Sudden 50 mph mud storms are battering Nevada’s Black Rock Desert throughout Burning Man 2025. It has upended preparations and endangered festivalgoers—but many credit score Elon Musk’s Starlink for crucial early warnings that helped avert better hurt.
Contributors recounted how visibility dropped to practically zero and wind-force chaos ensued—performing one in all this 12 months’s most harmful pure assaults on the makeshift metropolis of creativity. Because of Starlink, a two-hour advance alert gave individuals time to brace their camps and examine on each other. As longtime attendee Johnny Digz said:
“Ten years in the past, we had no concept what was coming. Now, security is a part of the dialog.”
This reliance on high-tech indicators a stark shift for Burning Man’s usually unplugged ethos, outlined by self-reliance and decommodification—core rules of the competition. But, because the storm bore down, survival instincts took priority. Within the insanity, Starlink was handled not as an encroacher however as important emergency gear.
70,000 – 80,000 individuals are anticipated for this 12 months’s Burning Man, going down from August twenty fourth to September 1st.
