Weather At Burning Man 2022

 

Automated Transcription

OK, hello, hello. Tyler Bryden here. I hope everything’s going well. I’m returning from Burning Man and I thought, you know, how could I do the best way of sort of documenting that experience? Already seeing a ton of people sort of posting on Instagram, on Tik T.O.K, on on YouTube. Andrew Schultz just released a video and I thought maybe I would do like a full video, sort of sharing the experience. And I realized, you know, I’m very good at blabbering rambling on. And so I actually wanted to condense it into a couple themes. And so for this video specifically, I’m talking about the. Weather at Burning Man 2022, and this is my second year, 2019, which was now in comparison a beautiful year in terms of weather conditions that were experienced and from almost anyone that I had talked to. 2022 was one of the most rough experiences in terms of weather at Burning Man. There was one other year that sort of sticks out in people’s memory. 2015, where there was lots of dust storms. I don’t know if there was rain that year.

But there was very cold temperatures at night that no one really expected either. And so it seems like anyone who had that experience in 2015 had been slightly jaded. And then people this year at 2022, although, you know, generally the theme was an incredible experience, the energy, everything coming together, an amazing reunion after, you know, several years without an official Burning Man, that it was one of the hottest, toughest years to deal with. And just to sort of illustrate a couple of these pieces, I shared that this was a video that I shared. In a video before as a sort of preparing and we could see some of the weather here. I don’t know if I think you should get a little bit of volume there we go, that’s what make sure it’s not too loud. Vicious storms. This was actually during the build time and so I mean it felt so bad for some of the people who had been.

Even even longer. Some people who were trying to put everything together for burning parted around. And in this case, like there were completely white out days with high winds and I think a lot of people felt, especially if you got there early at Burning Man, that not everything was completely finished. And I don’t think this is anyone’s fault. This was just like crazy conditions at Burning Man that made this happen. So you can see this video, I’ve got this link and I’ve got a couple of images and stuff that I’m going to scroll through that just sort of, you know, demonstrate it. In 2019 we had a couple of dust storms, but they were very short lived, whereas people.

Doing the burn, burn like sort of the build at Burning Man experience, the continuous long conditions of this, so very, very intense overall. I’m just going to go through double, I think sort of images that sort of stick out from me for the week that I think sort of demonstrate the weather conditions that we’re here. So this is 1, this is a picture of me after 17 of us were basically out pretty deep in the Playa and sort of the main you know, area outside of the actual city. Out in the desert and an incredible dust storm came at night. Lasted a decent amount of time but reduced visibility to like four or five feet. Very intense moment. And there was actually Thunder and lightning. I didn’t have any images of that, but like Thunder and lightning at at Burning Man. And then there was actual drops of rain. And so there was a moment where everyone thought that there might be a large amount of rain coming, and with that.

You know, so someone sort of just yelled if it rains, this is gonna be a disaster. And there was one sort of crack of Thunder slash lightning that you sort of sent a shock of fear throughout everyone at Burning Man. You could see everyone sort of like on their normal pass. And then when this happened, all of a sudden it sort of clicked and people started like, oh, God, and started like, heading back towards camp. And so everyone was on their way out to have fun, great night. And then all of a sudden it was like, go back to your RV, talk to a Ranger. They said, hey, go back to your RV. It’s not time to be here. We don’t know what’s going to happen and if it rained.

We’re not going to be able to get back. Could be a really dangerous situation and especially people who weren’t necessarily well lit. That could be, you know, really bad. And we could see, you know, big art cars that were well lit. You could see them sort of through the dust. But overall the visibility was, you know, completely reduced within seconds. And you know, for myself here, I wasn’t quick enough to get my mask and stuff on as I would have liked. And then you can see the the impact on the hair, still big smile, a lot of fun and for people who have been their first time.

Even for myself as a second time had not necessarily experienced that intense of a dust storm where the visibility had been reduced so quickly and especially out in the deep sort of Playa that it was quite an experience and a memorable one, one that I think everyone really enjoyed. But also you could see, you know, where things could go a little bit up, you know, take a little bit of turn. So that was sort of interesting now, well, you know, while there was. You know, a couple sort of big dust storms throughout the week. They’re also just some beautiful moments and I think the sort of flat surface of the desert and then when you the sort of the sun and the clarity and the lack of clouds in in the region makes for beautiful sunrises, makes for beautiful sunsets and I’m mixing them all up sunrises and sunsets, whatever. But, you know, that was while there were some sort of extreme conditions, there were also some really beautiful.

Moments in weather conditions, I will say. It was extremely hot. I do have, I think I have the right many things clicking around here. I had the burn, I had a past temperature here and you can see sort of high of 36, high of 34. We saw 3840 at sometimes during the week and you could definitely feel that. So there’s a lot of people who are just not doing anything during the day trying to sleep if they could. If you were in a tent that was going to be a very, very difficult and overall most people were sort of saving up energy.

I’m trying to not, you know, not get, you know, sort of hurt throughout the day so they could rest up and then have fun at night. And I will say I do have, you know, we’ll say that the weather at night was really nice, even I would say hot. And whereas in other years it had been sort of showed as cold. This was a picture. This isn’t a very good picture to be honest, but it was sort of there were dust storms at night too. And one dust storm, I believe on a Thursday night was lasted several hours and really lots when I.

You know, a friend I went with, we sort of parked on Esplanade, watched as people continued their journeys, which was just incredible to see, like the, you know, people on their on a mission, on their way there with almost no visibility, making it to art, making it to shows. And, you know, to to see the resilience that people had when, you know, dealing with these dust storms, but not letting that ruin the fun is super exciting. And also just, you know, we had that original shot here, like immediately. Once that sort of calmed down, the entire city came back to life. So that’s also one of the really exciting parts of of Burning Man. This was a couple other just a picture I took in the day, a little bit of you could see sort of these little dust, sort of, I wouldn’t say they’re tornadoes, little twisters, little clouds coming down. And a lot of times these were sort of indicators that, you know, something was going to happen or more dust was on its way. And so had a couple of great, you know, sort of experiences like this. You can’t necessarily see it, but I can sort of feel it by looking at this image.

Again, that is very, very hot. Myself personally, I, you know, I unfortunately got, you know, some some, some cold sores from this that are still healing and it sort of ravaged my lips in that regards. And then you’ve got a, you know, incredible shot of the burning the man here. This was taken from online. So this wasn’t a personal picture taken, but looks like, you know, very low visibility and, you know, this wasn’t actually as bad as it was. There was times when it was.

Even lower visibility. You can see some other pictures here. This was from Quentin, from The Weather Channel, from a news story, and you could see, I would say even at some circumstances this there. It was reduced visibility here where you could barely probably even see this man on the bike. So definitely some intense weather. I’ve got a couple other sort of just links with some stories. I don’t need to disable this sudden dust storm strand so that like lots of people talking about the dust storms, the difficulty of it getting in.

Exodus, which I’ll actually created just a single video on that, definitely some high winds and then just some other pictures, other links from sort of people talking about the weather. And you know, it’s about 10 degrees above what we consider seasonal average. So it was sort of the hottest record on the hottest weather on record and definitely people could feel that. And I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say the word was complaining, but just sort of bearing through it and doing their best. I’ve got another link. This was really interesting if you want to check it out. Build week.

And it sort of shows some of the documentation of that, whether that was taking place and then not only before, during and then now there’s people out there still cleaning up the city. And I hope that they’re having OK whether because it was definitely pretty intense that sometimes I still was lucky enough to go out during the day for several events, but tried to reduce some of the biking lengths of it. And, you know, I had a couple of times where it was out there, you know, maybe it stayed up at night or I was out. Early to watch the sunrise and as soon as it started to hit say 10:00 AM really could start to hear, feel the the temperature just cranking up very, very quickly. So for anyone who was there, I hope you made it through either. The weather didn’t, you know, tarnish your experience. It was definitely intense, but some of that intense intensity made it worthwhile, made it so fun and there was some beautiful nights because of all of it. So this is my little video on specifically the weather at Burning Man 2022.

I’m going to talk a little bit about Exodus. I’m going to talk about some of the food, personal experience, the art, and then the music at Burning Man as well. So you’ll see those videos come out here and hopefully we’ll link them for you and also link these images and a couple other resources that I’ve shared in this video. Overall, fantastic experience. There were moments where I was like, I don’t know why I’m here, I just want to go home. I don’t think I’m ever going to come back. And immediately as you get some rest, as you get some sleep, that feeling changes. So I’m sure if not exactly next year.

That there will be, you know, more experiences for me at Burning Man. One of my goals is to go at least five times in my life. And even from sharing a couple of things from this year, there’s already some people reaching out who want to come. And I think one of the best experiences for me has been seeing people have their first experience at Burning Man and helping be part of that, even if it’s only my second year, you really have a lot of experience gained very quickly and sort of a mental map of everything. And that’s really helpful to then make, you know, make it a great experience for yourself.

Make a great experience for others and make great experience for first time burners. So this has been Tyler Briden talking about Burning Man 2022. Really doing my best to sort of balance. You know how I talk about this. Not like not really trying to do this about, I don’t know, like this, this idea of like decommodification of Burning Man is really important to me. Really what I’m doing is just sharing my experience, working through everything that I had, you know, gone through at Burning Man, sharing it with you and hopefully this is insightful, helpful, enjoyable and that I’m doing.

Good job representing Burning Man, so thank you so much for checking this out. Hope you have a great rest of your day. Look forward to connecting again soon. Bye bye.