Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the western United States. The event's name comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night, the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Since 1991, the event has been at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. According to Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten stated principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt playa 100 miles (160 km) north of Reno, Nevada, that encompasses more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of land and contains more than 120 miles (200 km) of historic trails. It is in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.
Gerlach, Nevada is a census-designated place (CDP) in Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The population was 130 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area. Prior to 2010, Gerlach was part of the Gerlach–Empire census-designated place. The town of Empire is now a separate CDP. The next nearest town, Nixon, is 60 miles (100 km) to the south on a reservation owned by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. The Fly Geyser is located near Gerlach.
A dry lake bed, also known as a playa, is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceed recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline compounds, it is known as an alkali flat. If covered with salt, it is known as a salt flat.
Pineapple Express is a specific recurring atmospheric river both in the waters immediately northeast of the Hawaiian Islands and extending northeast to any location along the Pacific coast of North America. It is a non-technical term and a meteorological phenomenon. It is characterized by a strong and persistent large-scale flow of warm moist air, and the associated heavy precipitation. A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such relatively narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.
A cloudburst is an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood conditions. Cloudbursts can quickly dump large amounts of water, e.g. 25 mm of the precipitation corresponds to 25,000 metric tons per square kilometre. However, cloudbursts are infrequent as they occur only via orographic lift or occasionally when a warm air parcel mixes with cooler air, resulting in sudden condensation. At times, a large amount of runoff from higher elevations is mistakenly conflated with a cloudburst. The term "cloudburst" arose from the notion that clouds were akin to water balloons and could burst, resulting in rapid precipitation. Though this idea has since been disproven, the term remains in use.
State Route 447 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Nevada. The highway is almost entirely within Washoe County but does for a brief time enter Pershing County, Nevada. The highway connects the town of Gerlach to the remainder of the state via Wadsworth. Though passing through extremely remote and desolate areas of Nevada, the highway has recently gained fame as the primary route to access the Black Rock Desert, the site of the annual Burning Man festival. The state maintained portion ends at Gerlach; however the highway continues as Washoe County Route 447 from Gerlach north to the California state line near Cedarville.
Floods in the United States (2000–present) is a list of flood events which were of significant impact to the country during the 21st century, since 2000. Floods are generally caused by excessive rainfall, excessive snowmelt, storm surge from hurricanes, and dam failure.
John Law is an American artist, culture-jammer, and neon sign technician. He was a primary member of the Cacophony Society and a member of the Suicide Club. He is also a co-founder of Burning Man which evolved out of the spirit of the Cacophony Society when a precursor solstice party was banned from San Francisco's Baker Beach and merged with another Cacophony event on the Black Rock desert in Nevada. Originally from Michigan, Law has lived in San Francisco, California since 1976, and has maintained the signage and clock face of the Tribune Tower in Oakland, where he also has an office, since 1996.
Global weather activity of 2007 profiles the major worldwide weather events, including blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, tropical cyclones, and other weather events, from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2007. Winter storms are events in which the dominant varieties of precipitation are formed during cold temperatures; they include snow or sleet, or a rainstorm where ground temperatures are cold enough to allow ice, including freezing rain, to form. Thehy may be marked by strong wind, thunder, lightning thunderstorms, heavy precipitation, including ice storm, wind transporting some substance through the atmosphere, including dust storms, snowstorms, and hail storms. Other major non winter events such as large dust storms, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, gales, flooding, and rainstorms are also caused by such phenomena.
Hualapai Flat is a valley in northwestern Nevada, United States, located northwest of the Black Rock Desert. The two valleys are separated by the Calico Hills. The Granite Range marks the southern and western edges of Hualapai Flat. To the north the valley is constrained by the Granite Range and the Calico Hills. Washoe, Pershing, and Humboldt counties meet in the Hualapai Flat.
Trego Hot Springs is located in the Black Rock Desert at the location of Trego, Nevada, a former station on the Western Pacific Railroad. The name "Trego" dates from the 1910s, just after the railroad was built. Previously, the springs had names like Hot Springs, Kyles Hot Springs (1864), Butte Spring, and Butte Hot Spring.
William Zervakos McFarland is an American businessman whose enterprises have been characterized by fraud. He has served time in prison for financial crimes related to Fyre Festival, having defrauded investors of $27.4 million. Vanity Fair describes him as "the poster boy for millennial scamming".
Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival organized by Billy McFarland, an American businessman whose enterprises have been characterized by fraud, and American rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent of promoting the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.
The following is a list of weather events that occurred on Earth in the year 2022. The year began with a La Niña. There were several natural disasters around the world from various types of weather, including blizzards, cold waves, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and tropical cyclones. The deadliest weather event of the year were the European heat waves, which killed over 26,000 people, 11,000 of which were in France. The costliest weather event of the year was Hurricane Ian, which caused at least $112.9 billion in damages in Florida and Cuba. Another significant weather event was the Pakistan floods, which killed 1,739 people and a total of $14.9 billion in damages.
Beginning on July 24, 2022, and lasting for a week, many flash flooding events hit several areas of the United States. These areas included parts of Missouri and Illinois, especially Greater St. Louis, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, parts of West Virginia, and the Las Vegas Valley. Several rounds of severe thunderstorms began in Missouri on July 24, culminating during July 25 and 26, when St. Louis broke its previous 1915 record for the most rainfall in a span of 24 hours. Governor Mike Parson declared a state of emergency on July 26. Over one hundred people were rescued from floods, and two people were killed. Late on July 27 and into July 28, historic flooding began in central Appalachia, particularly in Kentucky, where a state of emergency was declared. A total of 38 people were killed in Kentucky as a direct result of flooding, with a 39th fatality occurring days later during cleanup efforts and a 40th coming in September during cleanup efforts in Pike County.
Old Razorback Mountain is a 5,650-foot elevation (1,722 m) summit located in Pershing County, Nevada, United States.
Hurricane Kay was a Category 2 hurricane that made landfall along the Pacific coast of the Baja California peninsula as a tropical storm. The twelfth named storm and eighth hurricane of the 2022 Pacific hurricane season, Kay originated from an area of disturbed weather that formed south of southern Mexico. Overall, damage from Kay totaled $10.62 million and it was responsible for five fatalities. Rain from the storm proved beneficial for firefighters battling the Fairview Fire in Southern California.
In a period of three days on September 1–3, 2023, flooding occurred as part of a seasonal monsoon season across portions of the Southwestern United States, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and the Las Vegas Valley. Muddy terrain during the Burning Man festival stranded more than 70,000 people.
