AFP
WASHINGTON
Massive downpours in the Nevada desert have forced the postponement of the opening of Burning Man, an annual festival started as a countercultural event and adopted by Silicon Valley A-listers.
Rains were so heavy Monday that roads from the closest main city Reno to the site 110 miles (180 km) away in the arid Black Rock Desert were impassable, the festival said on its Facebook page.
“Organizers of the annual Burning Man event are asking any participants traveling to the event now to postpone their arrival until at least Tuesday morning,” organizers Black Rock City LLC said. “Black Rock City has shut down following rainstorms that left standing water on the playa, leaving it un-drivable,” it added, referring to the desert festival site. The cultural festival originated as a tiny event in San Francisco in 1986 but now draws 50,000 people or more each year including many from the high-tech.
Participants create a city in the middle of the desert that is “a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance”, and end their weeklong gathering by burning a giant wooden statue of a man.
Would-be attendees took the delay this year in stride.
“It is what it is. Guess we’re starting the party in line,” one Alex Elliott wrote on the festival’s Facebook page.