start Preparations SF to Reno Camp Vermeer Weather Rangers Center Camp Around the Center Esplanade Lamplighters Nighttime Esplanade The Man Nudity & Drugs
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Burning Man 2000 Weather
The weather was certainly the topic of conversation this year: 70 mile-per-hour winds, dust storms and the resulting whiteouts, rain and the resulting mud and difficulty walking / driving / bicycling.
Of course, a photo of a whiteout wouldn't be anything but, err, white. But you can get the idea from seeing the landscape behind us.
It won't be easy describing the conditions to those who haven't lived a week with fine playa dust which gets into everything, with temperatures which swing between 40 and 115 F, eye-blistering sun and aggressive dehydration.
The visiblity quickly changes from the horizon to something closer than the fingertips of your outstretched hands.
The first day or two the weather was perfect, with late evening temperatures in the high 70s or low 80s, but then the high winds, whiteouts, and cloudbursts started.
I was loathe to expose my new camcorder to the elements, but my journalistic instincts took over, and I fashioned a bad-weather covering from a shopping bag, through which only the viewfinder and lens appeared.
I'm glad I did; otherwise you wouldn't be able to share the obscured view of the Man from a few hundred feet away, or the wave of white coming toward the playa toilet. Strange and wonderful are the changes of weather.
Here's a clear sunset on the mountains surrounding Black Rock City. A few minutes before everything was in a windstorm, a few minutes later it happened again. Those goggles made a world of difference; without them I would have been at the mercy of the elements. Then the rain hit.
The rain takes no prisoners on the playa.
Following in a long tradition of taking photos of my foot coverings for these web pages I present "playa platforms" - the rain combines with the alkali dust of the dry lakebed which we're calling home this week.
The result is is a very hard concrete-like mud which bonds to the bottoms of shoes and tires, making everything a few inches taller (and much heavier).
This year's weather was the biggest consumer of my time as a Ranger.
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