Burning Man attendees face raging dust storm as they wait hours to leave festival

Last year, Burning Man attendees were stuck in impassable, acidic mud after monsoon rains hit the festival

Burning Man attendees have once again felt the desert’s wrath on the closing day of the annual music and arts festival.

Just hours after attendees burned The Man — the huge effigy that serves as the center point of “Black Rock City” during the festival — participants found themselves caught in a brutal dust storm as they lined up to leave the festival grounds.

The Monday storm made it impossible for many drivers to see more than a few feet in any direction as they crawled away from Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Burners trying to leave by car were hit with wait times of four hours or more depending on where they departed from and when, according to Burning Man's Traffic social media account.

Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai during the installation of his ‘I’m Fine’ Sculpture, at Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert on August 23, 2024. Attendees leaving the festival on September 2, 2024, were caught in a dust storm and were left to sit in traffic for hours as a result (Ukrainian Witness via Getty Imag)

Images taken on the final day and published on SFGate show lines of vehicles completely covered in a thick layer of grey dust. There is no blue in the sky — just endless stretches of brown.

The dust storm only compounded the troubles of Burners who waited until the last minute to figure out how they were going to leave the desert. According to Pershing County Sheriff's official Nathan Carmichael, there are always attendees who rely on what is essentially hitchhiking to make it to more traditional cities.

He told the Reno Gazette Journal that he wasn't surprised that some attendees go to the festival with no clear plan on how to get back, but said he was puzzled by how many are willing to put themselves in risky situations just to attend.

"But what does surprise me every year is how much people are willing to compromise their safety to get a ride," he said

Then there's the other class of Burners — the ones with money and a plan — who can ignore the lines completely by just flying over them.

Some affluent Burners likely managed to escape Black Rock City by air thanks to the festival's on-site airport, assuming they took off before the dust storm blew in to the camps.

A temporary airport established just outside the similarly temporary Black Rock City, allowed Burners with private planes — or those willing to shell out for tickets on a specialty flight — to arrive and depart from the festival without waiting in the massive car lines.

Officially called Black Rock City Municipal Airport, the site features a pair of 6,000-foot runways that provide safe landing areas on a dry lakebed in the Nevada desert. The airfield opened two weeks before the event and continued through its conclusion.

This isn’t the first time Burning Man attendees have run into trouble trying to leave the festival; last year, monsoon rains turned the desert into an impassable mud pit, leaving Burners stranded for days.