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Tag: deserts

  • Scientists find ancient life-size animal rock carvings in the Saudi Arabian desert

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    NEW YORK — Researchers have discovered life-size rock carvings of camels, gazelles and other animals in the Saudi Arabian desert.

    The carvings date back to around 12,000 years ago and many are over 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall. Scientists say they were created using a wedge-shaped rock to create sharp lines.

    Several were etched on narrow ledges so the artists couldn’t even step back to survey the final product as they were working.

    “To engrave that much detail with just a rock takes real skill,” said Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist with the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany who was involved in the discovery.

    The animal carvings and engraving tools found at the site show that people were living in the area about 2,000 years earlier than scientists thought. It isn’t clear how they survived in such arid conditions — whether they lived off of shallow lakes that pooled for part of the year or drank water that accumulated in deep crevices.

    People have been creating rock art in Saudi Arabia for thousands of years, Guagnin said. But older engravings can be tricky to date since they tend not to feature writing and there are few remnants such as charcoal, which can be sent to a lab for analysis.

    “We know relatively little about art in the Middle East during this very ancient period of the human past,” Michael Harrower, a Johns Hopkins University archaeologist who wasn’t involved in the research, said in an email.

    In the latest discovery, scientists found a rock pick buried in the landscape directly under the carvings, allowing them to date the tool and the art it was used to create. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

    Scientists weren’t sure if people lived in the desert during this time period since conditions were dry and water was thought to be scarce. They thought people may have moved in later, when the landscape was marked by greener pastures and lakes.

    One of the carvings depicted an auroch, an ancestor of wild cattle that didn’t live in the desert and that went extinct. That made Guagnin wonder if the artists had encountered the animals by traveling somewhere else during the dry season.

    “They must have been fully established communities that knew the landscape really well,” she said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Hurricane Erin’s massive waves threaten to isolate North Carolina’s Outer Banks

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    There’s a popular T-shirt on Hatteras Island on the North Carolina Outer Banks that says: “One road on. One road off (sometimes)” — poking fun at the constant battle between Mother Nature and a thin ribbon of pavement connecting the narrow barrier island to the rest of the world.

    Mother Nature is probably going to win this week. Hurricane Erin is forecast to move hundreds of miles offshore from the islands but the massive storm is still sending waves 20 feet (6 meters) or greater crashing over vulnerable sand dunes.

    Officials have ordered evacuations of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands even without a hurricane warning because that tiny ribbon of highway called NC 12 will likely be torn up and washed out in several places, isolating villages for days or weeks.

    The 3,500 or so Outer Bankers who live there have handled isolation before. But most of the tens of thousands of vacationers have not.

    “We haven’t seen waves of that size in a while and the vulnerable spots have only gotten weaker in the past five years,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, a group of several universities that study the Outer Banks.

    In a basic sense, they are sand dunes that were tall enough to stay above the ocean level when many of the Earth’s glaciers melted 20,000 years ago.

    The barrier islands in some places are as far as 30 miles (48 kilometers) off mainland North Carolina. To the east is the vast Atlantic Ocean. To the west is the Pamlico Sound.

    “Water, water everywhere. That really resonates on the Outer Banks,” Corbett said.

    The most built up and populated part of the Outer Banks are in the north around Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills, which aren’t under the evacuation order. South of the Oregon Inlet, scoured out by a 1846 hurricane, is Hatteras Island, where the only connection to the mainland is the NC 12 highway. South of there is Ocracoke Island, accessible only by boat or plane.

    The first highways to reach the area were built more than 60 years ago. And the Outer Banks started booming, as it went from quaint fishing villages to what it is now, dotted with 6,000-square foot vacation homes on stilts.

    On a nice day, what look like snowplows and street sweeper brushes wait on the side of NC 12 to scoop and sweep away the constantly blowing sand.

    When the storms come, water from the ocean or the sound punch through the sand dunes and wash tons of sand and debris on the road. In more extreme cases, storms can break up the pavement or even create new inlets that require temporary bridges.

    It cost the North Carolina Department of Transportation more than $1 million a year in regular maintenance to keep NC 12 open during the 2010s. They also spent about $50 million over the decade on repairs after storms.

    But the state estimates Dare County, which includes most of the Outer Banks, brings in $2 billion in tourism revenue a year. So the cycle of clean up and repair continues.

    It can take time to fix things. Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011 both cut inlets into Hatteras Island and ferries were needed for two months. It can still take days to get NC 12 back open even after more routine Nor’easters.

    It’s not just storms that impact the island. As the planet warms and polar ice melts, rising ocean levels threaten the Outer Banks. In a place where most of the land is only a few feet above sea level, every inch of sand counts.

    In Rodanthe, which sticks the farthest out into the Atlantic, the churning ocean has swallowed up more than a dozen homes since 2020. Officials think at least two unoccupied homes are likely to be lost if the waves from Erin are as strong as predicted.

    Shelli Miller Gates waited tables on the Outer Banks to earn money as a college student in the late 1970s. She remembers houses with no air conditioning, televisions or phones. And she adored it.

    “I love the water. I love the wildness of it. It’s the way I want to live my life,” the respiratory therapist said.

    It’s a lifestyle embraced by many. The area’s shorthand “OBX” shows up in many places as a source of pride, including the first three letters on license plates issued by the state.

    The isolation contributes to a sense of community. Gates has seen people band together countless times when their connection to the outside world is severed. And there is always the allure of getting to live someplace where others just get to visit.

    “There’s things everywhere. There’s earthquakes and lizards and floods. Looks at the poor people out in western North Carolina,” Gates said. “There are so many things that can happen to you. I feel like you have to find the place that feels like home.”

    ___

    Associated Press Journalist Ben Finley contributed to this report.

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  • ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

    ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A flotilla of hot air balloons ascended into a clear desert sky on Saturday to kick off a colorful mass ascension at the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

    The nine-day gathering draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and pilots to New Mexico each fall for the rare opportunity to be within arm’s reach as the giant balloons are unpacked and inflated.

    Balloons took flight to screams of delight after a brief weather delay and were spirited away by a gentle breeze. Propane burners roared and hundreds of balloons — from traditional globes to cartoonish figures — rose to speckle the sky with color.

    “The mass ascension is just magical, unlike anything in the world really that I’ve seen,” said Paul Kluzak, of Phoenix. He has come twice before and arrived this year wearing a foot-tall hat resembling a hot-air balloon, with a camera slung around his neck. “Seeing them all at once is just really, really cool.”

    Companion Heather Kluzak said that words can hardly express the thrill of the event.

    “We just like to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s fun to be out on the field” where the balloons inflate and depart.

    This year’s fiesta includes 106 balloons in special shapes, 16 of which will be making their fiesta debut. That includes Mazu, modeled after the sea goddess of the same name who is deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture and traditions.

    Ordinarily, cool morning temperatures at dawn can help pilots stay in the air longer, or carry more weight. But the morning air was unusually warm on opening day, with many spectators stripping down to T-shirts.

    Morning lows and afternoon highs are expected to be above average for days in a city that on Monday recorded its hottest temperature this late in the year, at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

    Globally, things have been trending hotter too. It’s likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported in early September.

    Typically, when the mornings are cool, less fuel is needed to get the balloons to rise. Fiesta veterans explain it is all about generating lift by heating the air inside the envelope to temperatures greater than what is on the outside.

    Still, ballooning happens year-round in many places, including in the simmering Phoenix area, which has seen its share of record-breaking temperatures over recent months.

    Troy Bradley, an accomplished balloon pilot who has been flying for decades, shrugged off the warmer weather in Albuquerque.

    “These are really non-issues from a spectator’s standpoint,” he said. “I don’t see any difference other than they won’t be freezing in the pre-dawn hours.”

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  • ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

    ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A flotilla of hot air balloons ascended into a clear desert sky on Saturday to kick off a colorful mass ascension at the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

    The nine-day gathering draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and pilots to New Mexico each fall for the rare opportunity to be within arm’s reach as the giant balloons are unpacked and inflated.

    Balloons took flight to screams of delight after a brief weather delay and were spirited away by a gentle breeze. Propane burners roared and hundreds of balloons — from traditional globes to cartoonish figures — rose to speckle the sky with color.

    “The mass ascension is just magical, unlike anything in the world really that I’ve seen,” said Paul Kluzak, of Phoenix. He has come twice before and arrived this year wearing a foot-tall hat resembling a hot-air balloon, with a camera slung around his neck. “Seeing them all at once is just really, really cool.”

    Companion Heather Kluzak said that words can hardly express the thrill of the event.

    “We just like to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s fun to be out on the field” where the balloons inflate and depart.

    This year’s fiesta includes 106 balloons in special shapes, 16 of which will be making their fiesta debut. That includes Mazu, modeled after the sea goddess of the same name who is deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture and traditions.

    Ordinarily, cool morning temperatures at dawn can help pilots stay in the air longer, or carry more weight. But the morning air was unusually warm on opening day, with many spectators stripping down to T-shirts.

    Morning lows and afternoon highs are expected to be above average for days in a city that on Monday recorded its hottest temperature this late in the year, at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

    Globally, things have been trending hotter too. It’s likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported in early September.

    Typically, when the mornings are cool, less fuel is needed to get the balloons to rise. Fiesta veterans explain it is all about generating lift by heating the air inside the envelope to temperatures greater than what is on the outside.

    Still, ballooning happens year-round in many places, including in the simmering Phoenix area, which has seen its share of record-breaking temperatures over recent months.

    Troy Bradley, an accomplished balloon pilot who has been flying for decades, shrugged off the warmer weather in Albuquerque.

    “These are really non-issues from a spectator’s standpoint,” he said. “I don’t see any difference other than they won’t be freezing in the pre-dawn hours.”

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  • Phoenix has set another heat record by hitting 110 degrees on 54 days this year

    Phoenix has set another heat record by hitting 110 degrees on 54 days this year

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    PHOENIX — How hot is it in Phoenix? In what has been the hottest summer ever measured, the sizzling city in the Sonoran Desert broke yet another record Saturday when temperatures topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius).

    It was the 54th day this year that the official reading at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport made the mark, eclipsing the previous record of 53 days set in 2020.

    Matt Salerno, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the hot streak could reach 55 days.

    “We do have one more day,” he said.

    An extreme heat warning remained in effect, with temperatures forecast at 111 F (43.9 C) on Sunday and 106 F (41.1 C) on Monday.

    Salerno said Phoenix experienced the hottest three months since record-keeping began in 1895, including the hottest July and the second-hottest August.

    The daily average temperature of 97 F (36.1 C) in June, July and August passed the previous record of 96.7 F (35.9 C) set three years ago.

    The average daily temperature was 102.7 F (39.3 C) in July, Salerno said, and the daily average in August was 98.8 F (37.1 C).

    In July, Phoenix also set a record with a 31-day streak of highs at or above 110 F (43.3 C). The previous record of 18 straight days was set in 1974.

    The sweltering summer of 2023 has seen a historic heat wave stretching from Texas across New Mexico and Arizona and into California’s desert.

    Worldwide, last month was the hottest August ever recorded, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It was also the second hottest month measured, behind only July 2023. Scientists blame human-caused climate change with an extra push from a natural El Nino, which is a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather around the globe.

    As of Saturday, Phoenix has tallied 104 days this year with temperatures over 100 F (37.7 C), Salerno said. That’s in line with the average of 111 triple-digit days every year between 1991 and 2020.

    Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and the most populous county in Arizona, also appears headed toward an annual record for heat-associated deaths.

    County public health officials have confirmed 194 heat-associated deaths this year as of Sept. 2. An additional 351 cases are under investigation.

    Maricopa County confirmed 425 heat-related deaths in 2022.

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  • Burning Man is ending, but the cleanup from heavy flooding is far from over

    Burning Man is ending, but the cleanup from heavy flooding is far from over

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    RENO, Nev. — The rain has passed, and the temple has burned. Now, as Burning Man slowly empties, it’s time to clean up.

    Burning Man organizers have three weeks to clean up any remnants of the makeshift city plopped across over 4 square miles (10 square kilometers) of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada, but a summer storm that left tens of thousands stranded in ankle-deep mud could alter that timeframe.

    The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists to the sprawling stretch of public land for a weeklong mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances. One of the principles of Burning Man is to leave no trace — an expectation that all attendees will pack out everything they brought to Black Rock City and clean out their camps before leaving.

    But in the aftermath of torrential rains that closed roads, jammed traffic and forced many to walk miles barefoot through the muck, the area is dotted with abandoned vehicles, rugs, furniture, tents and trash. In a normal year, the desert floor is harder and easier to navigate, but flooding and deep imprints from vehicles spinning tires in the muck have made traveling there more difficult.

    This week, many attendees descended on the airport in Reno, Nevada, to get last-minute flights home. Car washes at times turned away vehicles too caked in mud and clay, according to KTVN-TV in Reno. There are signs outside nearby grocery stores banning disposal of Burning Man-related trash and recycling in their bins.

    Eleonora Segreti, who lives in central Italy and made her second visit this year to Burning Man, left the site early Tuesday.

    Leave no trace is “a strong principle,” she said Tuesday after taking a shuttle to Reno-Tahoe International Airport. “If it is a matter of staying overnight one extra day to do the work to clean up, most of the people are doing that.”

    But that sentiment is not felt by everyone. Jeffrey Longoria of San Francisco said since he started attending, trash issues have gotten worse.

    “People are starting to leave a trace,” said Longoria, 37, while cleaning his mud-stained boots outside of a Walmart in Reno. “They’re forgetting the core principles of the burn.”

    The erosion of those core principals might be in part because many of the festival’s original attendees have gotten older, he said, and there’s a wave of newer attendees — “the kind that have a couple hundred thousand-dollar RVs and are careless about the environment.”

    A permit issued by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management requires Burning Man organizers to clear the area of debris after vehicles exit the desert, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northeast of Reno. Burning Man organizers did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about how the rain will impact the cleanup timeline.

    In a media update Wednesday evening, organizers said “individuals who had to leave before their carpools and camps were ready to depart, and camps who needed to leave early due to the storm, are returning to the event site today through Saturday to disassemble their projects, tear down their camps, and remove their possessions.”

    The temporary closure of the area for Burning Man is in effect for 66 days each year, according to the BLM: 31 to build the makeshift city, nine for the main event and 26 for post-festival cleanup.

    Last year, after the festival’s return following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Burning Man team narrowly passed its Oct. 7 inspection.

    “But it was extraordinarily and alarmingly close,” the restoration team’s manager wrote earlier this year in a post on the Burning Man website summarizing last year’s cleanup efforts, while urging attendees leave no trace.

    The post described 2022 as one of the “messiest playas in recent history” — evidenced by a 15-yard (13 meters) dumpster filled with cardboard boxes, glass bottles, carpeted rugs and plastic. The cleanup team also collected more than 1,000 tent stakes — “the most dangerous” and abundant debris left behind, according to the post.

    During the 2022 inspection, BLM surveyed 120 different areas chosen at random across the festival site for trash and debris, according to Burning Man’s annual cleanup report. They failed eight of the tests last year and would not have passed if they had failed 12, according to the report.

    Cleanup also involves smoothing out the dried lake bed with large rakes attached to trucks and picking up trash on the frequented highways, according to BLM spokesperson John Asselin.

    Next month, teams made up of federal employees and Burning Man organizers will again conduct a site inspection. Event organizers will be on the hook for any repairs that are identified as necessary, Asselin said.

    Many festival attendees — who refer to themselves as burners — arrive with limited supplies. Challenges in the form of brutal heat, dust storms and torrential rains are expected and, largely, welcomed.

    While there, they build an elaborate if temporary city of themed camps, decorated art cars and guerilla theatrics.

    The ceremonial burnings of a towering, faceless effigy Monday night, and the temple Tuesday night had been postponed because of heavy rain. More than a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) fell on Friday, turning the powdery desert floor into mud.

    For many, torching the temple has become the centerpiece of the celebration — an intimate, spiritual tradition in which attendees commemorate departed loved ones.

    Nevada U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, whose district includes Black Rock Desert, said Burning Man is a positive event for the area. Its organizers work well with local officials and he expects they again will meet the requirement to clean up, even if it’s “more of a chore this time.”

    Still, Amodei said, Burning Man organizers have been good partners and have cleaned up after themselves in past years, as their event permit requires.

    Cliff Osborne, a tow truck operator who is in his sixth year working at Burning Man, estimated that since Monday, his company has towed 50 vehicles to the highway, and freed another 60 vehicles from mud.

    For the first time this year, organizers hired a road-grader to smooth ruts in the well-traveled road from the festival site to the highway, Osborne said.

    He said on Wednesday that roads were hardening, dusty air had returned and he had seen no one injured. The site itself “is more messy this year than in the past,” with a lot more garbage, he said.

    Amodei told the AP it would be “a little bit more of a chore this time” to clean up the site. “And I’m sure they’re up to the task.”

    Some festivalgoers plan to stay as long as it takes to clean the grounds.

    “This is a national conservation area, and it’s part of our mission to leave it and as good a condition as we found it,” said Alexander Elmendorf, 36, who planned to stay until Friday. “So that means getting every bed, utensil, every cigarette butt.” ___

    Sonner and Stern reported from Reno, Nevada, and Komenda reported from Tacoma, Washington. Associated Press reporters Rio Yamat and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed. Stern is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms.

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  • Burning Man is ending, but the cleanup from heavy flooding is far from over

    Burning Man is ending, but the cleanup from heavy flooding is far from over

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    RENO, Nev. — The rain has passed, and the temple has burned. Now, as Burning Man slowly empties, it’s time to clean up.

    Burning Man organizers have three weeks to clean up the sprawling stretch of public land in the Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada, but a summer storm that left tens of thousands stranded in ankle-deep mud could alter that timeframe.

    The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a weeklong mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances. One of the principles of Burning Man is to leave no trace — an expectation that all attendees will pack out everything they brought to Black Rock City and clean out their camps before leaving.

    But in the aftermath of torrential rains that closed roads, jamming traffic and forcing many to walk miles barefoot through the muck, the area is dotted with abandoned vehicles, rugs, furniture, tents and trash. The ground itself has deep imprints and ruts.

    This week, many attendees have descended on the airport in Reno, Nevada, to get last-minute flights home. Car washes have at times turned away vehicles too caked in mud and clay, according to KTVN-TV in Reno. There are signs outside nearby grocery stores banning disposal of Burning Man-related trash and recycling in their bins.

    Eleonora Segreti, who lives in central Italy and made her second visit this year to Burning Man, left the site early Tuesday.

    “Everybody that I know and that I talked to, they really take this ‘leave no trace’ idea seriously,” she said Tuesday after taking a shuttle to Reno-Tahoe International Airport. “If it is a matter of staying overnight one extra day to do the work to clean up, most of the people are doing that.”

    But that sentiment is not felt by everyone. Jeffrey Longoria of San Francisco said since he started going to Burning Man, attendees have gotten “worse and worse” about leaving trash behind.

    “I’d say five years ago I’d see absolutely nothing,” said Longoria, 37, while cleaning his mud-stained boots outside of a Walmart in Reno. “And nowadays, it’s pretty bad. People are starting to leave a trace. They’re forgetting the core principles of the burn.”

    The erosion of those core principals might be in part because many of the festival’s original attendees have gotten older, and there’s a wave of newer attendees — “the kind that have a couple hundred thousand-dollar RVs and are careless about the environment,” Longoria said.

    A permit issued by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management requires Burning Man organizers to clear the area of debris after vehicles exit the desert, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northeast of Reno. Burning Man organizers did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about how the rain will impact the cleanup timeline.

    The temporary closure of the area for Burning Man is in effect for 66 days each year, according to the BLM: 31 to build the makeshift city, nine for the main event and 26 for post-festival cleanup.

    Last year, after the festival’s return following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Burning Man team narrowly passed its Oct. 7 inspection.

    “But it was extraordinarily and alarmingly close,” the restoration team’s manager wrote earlier this year in a post on the Burning Man website summarizing last year’s cleanup efforts, while urging attendees to “recommit” to one of its core principals: Leave no trace behind.

    The post described 2022 as one of the “messiest playas in recent history” — evidenced by a 15-yard (13 meters) dumpster filled with cardboard boxes, glass bottles, carpeted rugs and plastic. The restoration team also collected more than 1,000 tent stakes, which the post described as “the most dangerous” and “most abundant” type of debris left behind.

    During the 2022 inspection, BLM surveyed 120 different areas chosen at random across the festival site for trash and debris, according to Burning Man’s annual clean-up report. They failed eight of the tests last year and would not have passed if they failed 12, according to the report.

    Post-festival cleanup efforts also include smoothing out the dried lake bed with large rakes attached to trucks and picking up trash on the highways leading to and from Burning Man, according to BLM spokesperson John Asselin.

    Next month, teams made up of federal employees and Burning Man organizers will again enter the festival site for an inspection. Event organizers will be on the hook for any repairs that are identified as necessary, Asselin said.

    Many festival attendees — who refer to themselves as burners — arrive with limited supplies. Challenges in the form of brutal heat, dust storms and torrential rains are expected and, largely, welcomed.

    While there, they build an elaborate city across over four square miles (10 square kilometers) of colorful themed camps, decorated art cars and guerilla theatrics in preparation for the ceremonial burnings of a towering, faceless effigy and a temple dedicated to the dead. All of that is dismantled and to be hauled away when the festival ends.

    The wooden effigy burned Monday night, and the temple burned Tuesday night after being postponed because of heavy rain. More than a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) fell on Friday, turning the powdery desert floor into mud.

    For many, torching the temple has become the centerpiece of the celebration — a more intimate, spiritual event than the rave party-like immolation of the figure. By tradition, revelers leave the names of departed loved ones and other remembrances to be burned in the temple.

    Nevada U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, whose district includes Black Rock Desert, said Burning Man is overall positive for his community. But there is a lack of infrastructure at times to support the temporary city — not necessarily on the festival grounds itself, but in the two-lane road that takes people from Reno to the rural Nevada desert, cutting through the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s land.

    Still, Amodei said, Burning Man organizers have been good partners with northern Nevada and have cleaned up after themselves in past years, as their event permit requires.

    “So that’s going to be a little bit more of a chore this time,” Amodei told the AP. “And I’m sure they’re up to the task.”

    Some festivalgoers plan to stay as long as it takes to clean the grounds.

    “This is a national conservation area, and it’s part of our mission to leave it and as good a condition as we found it,” said Alexander Elmendorf, 36, who planned to stay there until Friday. “So that means getting every bed, utensil, every cigarette butt.” ___

    Sonner and Stern reported from Reno, Nevada, and Komenda reported from Tacoma, Wash. Associated Press reporter Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed. Stern is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms.

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  • Wait times to exit Burning Man drop after flooding left tens of thousands stranded in Nevada desert

    Wait times to exit Burning Man drop after flooding left tens of thousands stranded in Nevada desert

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    RENO, Nev. — The traffic jam leaving the Burning Man festival eased up considerably Tuesday as the exodus from the mud-caked Nevada desert entered a second day following massive rain that left tens of thousands of partygoers stranded there for days.

    A pair of brothers from Arizona who took their 67-year-old mother with them to Burning Man for the first time spent 11 hours into early Tuesday morning just getting out of the festival site, which is 15 miles (1.6 kilometers) from the nearest city of Gerlach, Nevada.

    “It was a perfect, typical Burning Man weather until Friday — then the rain started coming down hard,” said Phillip Martin, 47. “Then it turned into Mud Fest.”

    Event organizers began letting traffic flow out on the main road around 2 p.m. local time Monday — even as they urged attendees to delay their exit to help ease traffic. About two hours after the mass departure began, organizers estimated a wait time of about five hours.

    By Tuesday morning, wait times had dropped to between two and three hours, according to the official Burning Man account on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.

    The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a week-long mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances.

    The festival had been closed to vehicles after more than a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain fell Friday, causing flooding and foot-deep mud.

    The road closures came just before the first of two ceremonial fires signaling an end to the festival was scheduled to begin Saturday night. The event traditionally culminates with the burning of a large wooden effigy shaped like a man and a wood temple structure during the final two nights, but the fires were postponed as authorities worked to reopen exit routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.

    Organizers had also asked attendees not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno during that time as others had done throughout the weekend, including DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock.

    “The Man” was torched Monday night while the temple is set to go up in flames 8 p.m. Tuesday.

    The National Weather Service in Reno said some light rain showers could pass through Tuesday morning.

    The event began Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday morning, with attendees packing up and cleaning up after themselves.

    “We are a little bit dirty and muddy, but spirits are high. The party still going,” said Scott London, a Southern California photographer, adding that the travel limitations offered “a view of Burning Man that a lot of us don’t get to see.”

    Disruptions are part of the event’s recent history: Dust storms forced organizers to temporarily close entrances to the festival in 2018, and the event was twice canceled altogether during the pandemic.

    At least one fatality has been reported, but organizers said the death of a man in his 40s wasn’t weather-related. The sheriff of nearby Pershing County said he was investigating but has not identified the man or a cause of death.

    President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he was aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House was in touch with local authorities.

    The event is remote on the best of days and emphasizes self-sufficiency. Amid the flooding, revelers were urged to conserve their food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.

    Some attendees, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.

    Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and Rock riding in the back of a fan’s pickup truck. He said they had walked 6 miles through the mud before hitching a ride.

    “I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,” Diplo wrote.

    Cindy Bishop and three of her friends managed to drive their rented RV out of the festival at dawn on Monday when, Bishop said, the main road wasn’t being guarded.

    She said they were happy to make it out after driving toward the exit — and getting stuck several times — over the course of two days.

    But Bishop, who traveled from Boston for her second Burning Man, said spirits were still high at the festival when they had left. Most people she spoke with said they planned to stay for the ceremonial burns.

    “The spirit in there,” she said, “was really like, ‘We’re going to take care of each other and make the best of it.’”

    Rebecca Barger, a photographer from Philadelphia, arrived at her first Burning Man on Aug. 26 and was determined to stick it out through the end.

    “Everyone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,” Barger said. “I danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Michael Casey in Boston, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Lea Skene in Baltimore, Juan Lozano in Houston and Julie Walker in New York contributed.

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  • Burning Man revelers begin exodus after flooding left tens of thousands stranded in Nevada desert

    Burning Man revelers begin exodus after flooding left tens of thousands stranded in Nevada desert

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    BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. — Muddy roads flooded by a summer storm that left tens of thousands of partygoers stranded for days at the Burning Man counterculture festival had dried up enough by Monday afternoon to allow them to begin their exodus from the northern Nevada desert.

    Event organizers said they started to let traffic flow out of the main road around 2 p.m. local time — even as they continued urging attendees to delay their exit to help ease traffic on Monday. About two hours after the mass departure began, organizers estimated a wait time of about five hours.

    Organizers also asked attendees not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno as others had done throughout the weekend, including celebrity DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock. They didn’t specify why.

    The festival had been closed to vehicles after more than a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain fell Friday, causing flooding and foot-deep mud.

    The road closures came just before the first of two ceremonial fires signaling an end to the festival was scheduled to begin Saturday night. The event traditionally culminates with the burning of a large wooden effigy shaped like a man and a wood temple structure during the final two nights, but the fires were postponed as authorities worked to reopen exit routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.

    Weather permitting, “the Man” is scheduled to be torched 9 p.m. Monday while the temple is set to go up in flames 8 p.m. Tuesday.

    The National Weather Service in Reno said it should stay mostly clear and dry at the festival site Monday, although some light rain showers could pass through Tuesday morning. The event began Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday morning, with attendees packing up and cleaning up after themselves.

    “We are a little bit dirty and muddy, but spirits are high. The party still going,” said Scott London, a Southern California photographer, adding that the travel limitations offered “a view of Burning Man that a lot of us don’t get to see.”

    The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances. Disruptions are part of the event’s recent history: Dust storms forced organizers to temporarily close entrances to the festival in 2018, and the event was twice canceled altogether during the pandemic.

    At least one fatality has been reported, but organizers said the death of a man in his 40s wasn’t weather-related. The sheriff of nearby Pershing County said he was investigating but has not identified the man or a cause of death.

    President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he was aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House was in touch with local authorities.

    The event is remote on the best of days and emphasizes self-sufficiency. Amid the flooding, revelers were urged to conserve their food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.

    Some attendees, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.

    Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and Rock riding in the back of a fan’s pickup truck. He said they had walked six miles through the mud before hitching a ride.

    “I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,” Diplo wrote.

    Cindy Bishop and three of her friends managed to drive their rented RV out of the festival at dawn on Monday when, Bishop said, the main road wasn’t being guarded.

    She said they were happy to make it out after driving toward the exit — and getting stuck several times — over the course of two days.

    But Bishop, who traveled from Boston for her second Burning Man, said spirits were still high at the festival when they had left. Most people she spoke with said they planned to stay for the ceremonial burns.

    “The spirit in there,” she said, “was really like, ‘We’re going to take care of each other and make the best of it.’”

    Rebecca Barger, a photographer from Philadelphia, arrived at her first Burning Man on Aug. 26 and was determined to stick it out through the end.

    “Everyone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,” Barger said. “I danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Michael Casey in Boston, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Lea Skene in Baltimore, Juan Lozano in Houston and Julie Walker in New York contributed.

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  • Tens of thousands still stranded by Burning Man flooding in Nevada desert

    Tens of thousands still stranded by Burning Man flooding in Nevada desert

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    BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. — Tens of thousands of partygoers were still stranded Monday morning in the northern Nevada desert after a late-summer storm turned a week-long counterculture fest into a mud pit.

    Burning Man organizers said the main road leading out of the festival was still too muddy for a mass exodus of RVs and vehicles to safely exit but hoped traffic could begin flowing around noon Monday.

    Organizers closed the festival to vehicles after more than a half an inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain on Friday drenched the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno.

    The annual gathering attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances. Disruptions are part of the event’s recent history: Organizers had to temporarily close entrances to the festival in 2018 due to dust storms, and the event was twice canceled altogether during the pandemic.

    “We are a little bit dirty and muddy but spirits are high. The party still going,” said Scott London, a Southern California photographer, adding that the travel limitations offered “a view of Burning Man that a lot of us don’t get to see.”

    The road closures came just before “the Man” — a large wooden effigy — was supposed to have been burned Saturday night. Organizers said that the fires had been postponed to Monday night as authorities worked to reopen exit routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.

    At least one fatality has been reported at the festival, but Burning Man organizers said the death of a man in his 40s wasn’t weather-related. The sheriff of nearby Pershing County said he was investigating but has not identified the man.

    President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he is aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House is in touch with local officials. Biden said he did not know the cause of death.

    With their party closed to motorized traffic, attendees trudged through mud — many barefoot or with plastic bags on their feet. Revelers were urged to conserve supplies of food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.

    A few, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.

    Celebrity DJ Diplo posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and comedian Chris Rock riding in the back of a fan’s pickup truck. He said they had walked six miles through the mud before hitching a ride.

    “I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,” wrote Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.

    The event is remote on the best of days and emphasizes self-sufficiency — meaning most people bring in their own food, water and other supplies.

    Those who remained Sunday described a resilient community making the most of the mucky conditions: Many posted selfies of themselves covered in mud, dancing or splashing in the makeshift lakes.

    Rebecca Barger, a photographer from Philadelphia, arrived at her first Burning Man on Aug. 26 and was determined to stick it out through the end.

    “I’m not leaving until both ‘The Man’ and ‘The Temple’ burn,” Barger said, referring to the wooden effigy and wooden structure that are traditionally torched during the event’s last two nights.

    She said one of the biggest concerns has been the lack of toilet options because the trucks that normally arrive to clean out the portable toilets multiple times a day haven’t been able to reach the site since Friday’s rainstorm. Some revelers said trucks had resumed cleaning on Sunday.

    To prevent her shoes from getting stuck in the muddy clay, Barger says she put a plastic bag over each of her shoes and then covered each bag with a sock. Others were just barefoot.

    “Everyone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,” Barger said. “I danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.”

    On their website, organizers encouraged participants to remain calm and suggested that the festival is built to endure conditions like the flooding. They said cellphone trailers were being dropped in several locations Saturday night and that they would be briefly opening up internet overnight. Shuttle buses were also being organized to take attendees to Reno from the nearest town of Gerlach, a walk of about five miles (eight kilometers) from the site.

    The event began Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday with attendees packing up and cleaning up after themselves.

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Michael Casey in Boston, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Lea Skene in Baltimore, Juan Lozano in Houston, Julie Walker in New York and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed.

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  • Death investigated at Burning Man while 70,000 festival attendees remain stuck in Nevada desert after rain | CNN

    Death investigated at Burning Man while 70,000 festival attendees remain stuck in Nevada desert after rain | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Authorities are investigating a death at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert as thousands of people remain trapped on site after heavy rains inundated the area and created thick, ankle-deep mud which sticks to campers’ shoes and vehicle tires.

    Attendees were told to shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert and conserve food, water and fuel after a rainstorm swamped the area, forcing officials to halt any entering or leaving of the festival.

    “A little over 70,000 people,” remained stranded Saturday, Sgt. Nathan Carmichael, with the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, told CNN Sunday morning. Some people have left the site by walking out but “most of the RVs are stuck in place,” he said.

    On Sunday morning, event organizers said roads remained closed as they were “too wet and muddy” and more uncertain weather was likely on the way. While some vehicles were able to leave, others got stuck in the mud, organizers said on the event’s website.

    “Please do NOT drive at this time,” they added. “We will update you on the driving ban after this weather front has left the area.”

    The remote area in northwest Nevada was hit with 2 to 3 months’ worth of rain – up to 0.8 inches – in just 24 hours between Friday and Saturday morning. The heavy rainfall fell on dry desert grounds, whipping up thick, clay-like mud festivalgoers said was too difficult to walk or bike through.

    The sheriff’s office said it is investigating “a death which occurred during this rain event.” Authorities did not publicly name the person or provide details on the circumstances of the death.

    “The family has been notified and the death is under investigation,” the sheriff’s office said in a late Saturday news release.

    The individual was found on the playa and lifesaving procedures to revive them were not successful, Carmichael said Sunday, but did not share further details.

    Playa is the term used to describe sunken dry lake beds in deserts where water evaporates rather than running off, and even a small amount of rain can quickly soak a large area.

    Event organizers said they plan to burn the Man – the huge totem set on fire at the festival’s culmination – on Sunday night, if weather allows.

    The rainy conditions forecast over the area for Sunday afternoon had mostly passed to the east of the festival site, according to a social media post from organizers, though there is still a chance of showers and thunderstorms “for the rest of daylight hours” into the evening.

    Drone video shows vehicles stranded and stuck at Burning Man

    Authorities have not provided information on when roads could reopen, but the sunshine is expected to return Monday.

    Burning Man attendees walk through the mud on Saturday.

    “We do not currently have an estimated time for the roads to be dry enough for RVs or vehicles to navigate safely,” Burning Man organizers said in a Saturday evening statement. “Monday late in the day would be possible if weather conditions are in our favor. It could be sooner.”

    Organizers noted the rain falling on an already saturated playa overnight and Sunday “will affect the amount of time it takes for the playa to dry.”

    For now, the gate and airport into Black Rock City remain closed and no driving is allowed into or out of the city except for emergency vehicles, the organizers said on social media. Black Rock City is a temporary metropolis erected annually for the festival and comes complete with emergency, safety and sanitary infrastructure.

    The rain “made it virtually impossible for motorized vehicles to traverse the playa,” the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said, noting people were advised to shelter in place until the ground has dried enough to drive on safely.

    Vehicles trying to drive out will get stuck in the mud, Burning Man organizers said Saturday. “It will hamper Exodus if we have cars stuck on roads in our camping areas, or on the Gate Road out of the city,” the organizers added.

    “If you are in BRC, please shelter in place & stay safe,” organizers said.

    Storms and heavy rains across Nevada flooded other parts of the state and may have led to another death. In Las Vegas, authorities found a person unresponsive and “entangled with debris,” on Saturday morning who is believed to be “a drowning victim,” according to Jace Radke, a spokesperson for the city. An investigation is ongoing, Radke said in a news release.

    Dawn brought muddy realization to the Burning Man encampment, where the exit gates remain closed indefinitely because driving is virtually impossible.

    Some festivalgoers hiked miles on foot in the thick mud to reach main roads while others stayed at their camps, hoping for conditions to improve.

    Hannah Burhorn, a first-time attendee at the festival, told CNN people were trudging through the mud barefoot or with bags tied around their feet.

    “People who have tried to bike through it and have gotten stuck because it’s about ankle deep,” Burhorn said. The mud is so thick it “sticks to your shoes and makes it almost like a boot around your boot,” she added.

    It’s unclear exactly how many people are stranded at the festival, but typically more than 70,000 people attend the weeklong event. It’s being held from August 28 to September 4 this year.

    There weren’t any reports of injuries as of Saturday afternoon, Sean Burke, the director of emergency management for Pershing County, told CNN.

    Amar Singh Duggal and his friends managed to leave the festival after hiking about 2 miles in the mud, he told CNN. He estimated it took them about 2 hours to get to a main road where they arranged to be picked up and taken to Reno, about a 120-mile drive from the event grounds.

    Heavy rain covered the ground with thick mud at Burning Man in Black Rock Desert.

    “We made it, but it was pure hell (walking) through the mud,” Duggal said. “Each step felt like we were walking with two big cinder blocks on our feet.”

    Among those attending the festival was DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock.

    Rock posted a video on Instagram of thick mud and Diplo posted a series of videos in which he said a fan offered him and Rock a ride out of the site.

    The DJ said they walked several miles and were able to get to a nearby airport.

    Meanwhile, attendees who typically dedicate their time to making art and building community are now also focused on rationing supplies and dealing with connectivity issues.

    “There is super limited bandwidth and a lot of people at the camp (are) trying to cancel flights and arrange for extended time here” due to the weather, Burhorn told CNN via text message from a Wi-Fi camp.

    A still from a drone video shows vehicles trying to leave the Burning Man festival on Sunday, September 3.

    Still, the poor conditions have not stopped the creativity, said Burhorn, who had traveled from San Francisco.

    “People are building mud sculptures,” she said.

    Andrew Hyde, another attendee stuck at the Burning Man, said despite the muddy conditions making it difficult to walk, the weather has taken the meaning of the event back to its roots.

    “You come out here to be in a harsh climate, and you prepare for that,” Hyde told CNN’s Paula Newton. “So in many ways, everybody here just kind of made friends with their neighbors and it’s a community event.”

    Morale at the event is OK and there’s generally no panic among the attendees, Hyde said, describing music returning overnight.

    There are worries about the additional rain causing delays, however, and the unknowns of worsening conditions.

    “I think the concern is if we have another rain,” he said. “People need to go back to their jobs, back to the responsibilities they have back home.”

    A rainbow appears at Burning Man in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, on September 2, 2023.

    Organizers announced Saturday night they’ll be putting mobile cell trailers in different positions, configuring the organization’s Wi-Fi system for public access and deploying buses to nearby Gerlach to take people who might walk off the playa to Reno.

    “This is not likely a 24-hour operation at this time,” the festival said in a statement on its website.

    Organizers are also resourcing four-wheel-drive vehicles and all-terrain tires to help ferry medical and other urgent situations to the blacktop.

    There have been people who managed to walk to a main road and were waiting for transport from the festival organizers Saturday night, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said.

    Resources have been brought in from around northern Nevada to help people with medical needs on the event grounds, the sheriff’s office said.

    “Burning Man is a community of people who are prepared to support one another,” Burning Man said on its website. “We have come here knowing this is a place where we bring everything we need to survive. It is because of this that we are all well-prepared for a weather event like this.”

    “We have done table-top drills for events like this,” organizers added. “We are engaged full-time on all aspects of safety and looking ahead to our Exodus as our next priority.”

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  • Thousands told to shelter in place at Burning Man fest in Nevada with access closed due to flooding

    Thousands told to shelter in place at Burning Man fest in Nevada with access closed due to flooding

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    RENO, Nev. — Thousands of Burning Man attendees trudged in sloppy mud on Saturday — many barefoot or wearing plastic bags on their feet — as flooding from storms swept through the Nevada desert, forcing organizers to close vehicular access to the counterculture festival. Revelers were urged to shelter in place and conserve food, water and other supplies.

    Vehicular gates will be closed for the remainder of the event, which began on Aug. 27 and was scheduled to end on Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert where the festival is being held.

    More than one-half inch of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno, the National Weather Service in Reno said. At least another quarter of an inch of rain is expected Sunday.

    The Reno Gazette Journal reported that organizers started rationing ice sales and that all vehicle traffic at the sprawling festival grounds had been stopped, leaving portable toilets unable to be serviced.

    Officials haven’t yet said when the entrance is expected to be opened again, and it wasn’t immediately known when celebrants could leave the grounds.

    The announcements came just before the culminating moment for the annual event — when a large wooden effigy was to be burned Saturday night.

    Messages left Saturday afternoon by The Associated Press for both the Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, the agencies that closed the entrance, weren’t immediately returned.

    Many people played beer pong, danced and splashed in standing water, the Gazette Journal said. Mike Jed, a festivalgoer, and fellow campers made a bucket toilet so people didn’t have to trudge as often through the mud to reach the portable toilets.

    “If it really turns into a disaster, well, no one is going to have sympathy for us,” Jed said. “I mean, it’s Burning Man.”

    ___ This story has been corrected to say that the amount of rain Friday at the festival was believed to be more than one-half inch, not half a foot, and that another quarter of an inch of rain, not another quarter of a foot, was expected on Sunday.

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  • Tens of thousands at Burning Man told to conserve water and food after heavy rains leave attendees stranded in Nevada desert | CNN

    Tens of thousands at Burning Man told to conserve water and food after heavy rains leave attendees stranded in Nevada desert | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Tens of thousands of people attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert are being told to conserve food, water and fuel as they shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert after a heavy rainstorm pummeled the area, festival organizers said.

    Attendees were surrounded by thick, ankle-deep mud and organizers halted vehicles from traveling in or out of the festival after heavy rains started saturating the area Friday evening.

    Hannah Burhorn, a first-time attendee at the festival, told CNN in a phone interview Saturday the desert sand has turned into thick clay and puddles and mud are everywhere. People are wrapping trash bags and Ziploc bags around their shoes to avoid getting stuck, while others are walking around barefoot.

    “It’s unavoidable at this point,” she said. “It’s in the bed of the truck, inside the truck. People who have tried to bike through it and have gotten stuck because it’s about ankle deep.”

    The gate and airport into Black Rock City, a remote area in northwest Nevada, remain closed and no driving is allowed into or out of the city except for emergency vehicles, the organizers said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

    “Do not travel to Black Rock City! Access to the city is closed for the remainder of the event, and you will be turned around,” one statement read.

    More than 70,000 people attend the weeklong event annually, which this year is being held from August 28 to September 5. It’s unclear how many of those were stranded due to the weather.

    The city is expecting more showers overnight on Saturday, organizers said in a weather forecast update. The National Weather Service said showers and thunderstorms are expected to return Saturday evening and continue throughout Sunday, with temperatures ranging from highs in the 70s to a low overnight of 49 degrees.

    Rainfall reports from the National Weather Service suggest up to 0.8 inches of rain fell in the area from Friday morning through Saturday morning – approximately two to three months of rainfall for that location this time of year. Even small rainfall totals can lead to flooding in the dry Nevada desert.

    Flood watches were in effect in northeast Nevada, to the east of Black Rock City. Those watches noted individual storms were producing up to one inch of rainfall, but higher totals — as much as 3 inches — would be possible through the weekend.

    The Bureau of Land Management, which has jurisdiction over the land the festival is held on, is advising people heading to Burning Man to “turn around and head home,” as roads remain closed in the area, according to a statement obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal.

    Mud fills a Burning Man campsite after heavy rain in Nevada's Black Rock Desert on September 1, 2023.

    “Rain over the last 24 hours has created a situation that required a full stop of vehicle movement on the playa. More rain is expected over the next few days and conditions are not expected to improve enough to allow vehicles to enter the playa,” the statement read.

    The festival, which began in 1986, is held each summer in Black Rock City – a temporary metropolis that is erected annually for the festival. The city comes complete with planning services, emergency, safety and sanitary infrastructure.

    It is best known for its concluding event, in which a large wooden symbol of a man is ignited. The event attracts tens of thousands each year and in the past, celebrities from Sean “Diddy” Combs to Katy Perry have attended.

    The tens of thousands of attendees travel to and from the city along a two-lane highway to get to the festival, according to its website. The festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Burning Man participants dedicate their time to making art and building community. They can learn how to spin fire, or to pole dance, to make shrink art jewelry or build a giant sculpture of two people embracing and burn it down.

    Some on-site preparations for this year’s Burning Man were impacted by tropical storm Hilary in August, with high winds, rainfall and even flooding reported in the desert, CNN reported.

    Amber Kramer, a resident of Kings Beach, California, told CNN she’s staying in an RV with her group and “feels fine as long as we have food and water.”

    “My camp and I are on the roof [of the RV] trying to make the best of it,” Kramer said. She said she’s concerned for those staying in tents because the area is forecast to see more rain.

    “People with RVs have been asked by camp leaders if they have room for people with tents because they are expecting another storm,” she said.

    Kramer said she’s seen many people trudging around the camp with garbage bags strapped to their feet with duct tape in order to maneuver through the mud.

    Rainfall reports from the National Weather Service suggest up to 0.8 inches of rain fell at Black Rock City in Nevada from Friday morning through Saturday morning.

    Burhorn, who traveled from San Francisco, California, said the mud is so thick that it “sticks to your shoes and makes it almost like a boot around your boot,” making it even more difficult to move around, she added.

    She added she and her friends were not expecting any rain – only extreme heat. Burhorn said people trapped in the desert have limited cell service, making it almost impossible to get news on weather conditions or receive updates from festival organizers.

    “It’s all been completely word of mouth,” she said. “I just talked to my boyfriend on the phone who gave me a weather update. I was like, ‘can you tell me what’s going on in the news? We have no clue.’”

    Festival attendees say the grounds are caked with thick mud after heavy rains soaked the Black Rock Desert

    Burhorn said the mud is so thick that it “sticks to your shoes and makes it almost like a boot around your boot,” making it even more difficult to move around, she added.

    The silver lining, Burhorn said, is people are walking from camp to camp to check on others and make sure they have enough food and water. “People are still really looking out for each other, which is like a bubble of love.”

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  • Southern California braces for more floods as tropical storm soaks region from coast to desert

    Southern California braces for more floods as tropical storm soaks region from coast to desert

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    LOS ANGELES — Tropical Storm Hilary drenched Southern California from the coast to inland mountains and deserts Sunday evening, prompting rescues from swollen rivers and forcing some of the nation’s largest school districts to cancel Monday classes. Millions braced for more flooding and mudslides, even as the storm began to weaken.

    The first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, Hilary dropped more than half an average year’s worth of rain on some mountain and desert areas, including the desert resort city of Palm Springs, which saw nearly 3 inches of rain by Sunday evening.

    Forecasters warned of dangerous flash floods across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, and fire officials rescued 13 people from knee-deep water in a homeless encampment along the rising San Diego River. Meanwhile, rain and debris washed out some roadways and people left their cars stranded in standing water. Crews pumped floodwaters out of the emergency room at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage.

    The storm walloped California after making landfall in Mexico‘s arid Baja California Peninsula on Sunday in a sparsely populated area about 150 miles (250 kilometers) south of Ensenada. It then moved through mudslide-prone Tijuana, threatening the improvised homes that cling to hillsides just south of the U.S. border.

    The storm was projected to weaken as it continued moving northward over California and into Nevada, but threats remained. Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said the storm should become a “post-tropical cyclone” sometime Monday as it loses a well-defined center, but that “very heavy” rain and strong winds are still likely.

    The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, and said all campuses would be closed on Monday, as did districts across the region. San Diego schools postponed the first day of classes from Monday to Tuesday.

    “There is no way we can compromise the safety of a single child or an employee, and our inability to survey buildings, our inability to determine access to schools makes it nearly impossible for us to open schools,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a media briefing.

    Southern California got another surprise in the afternoon as an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 hit near Ojai, about 80 miles (130 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was felt widely and was followed by smaller aftershocks. There were no immediate reports of major damage or injury, according to a dispatcher with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.

    Hilary is just the latest major climate disaster to wreak havoc across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Hawaii’s island of Maui is still reeling from a blaze that killed over 100 people and ravaged the historic town of Lahaina, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Firefighters in Canada are battling that nation’s worst fire season on record.

    As Hilary bore down on Mexico, one person drowned Saturday in the Mexican township of Mugele, on the eastern side of the Baja Peninsula, when a vehicle was swept away by an overflowing stream. Rescue workers saved four other people, said Edith Aguilar Villavicencio, the mayor of Mulege.

    Mexican army troops fanned out across the area, where some of the worst damage occurred Saturday. Soldiers used bulldozers and dump trucks to help clear tons of boulders and earth clogging streets and roads that were turned into raging torrents a day earlier.

    Power lines were toppled in many places, and emergency personnel were working to restore power and reach those cut off by the storm.

    On Sunday morning in California, the warnings from officials didn’t keep everyone indoors. In coastal Carlsbad, just north of San Diego, 19-year-old Jack Johnson and his friends kept an eye on the huge waves, determined to surf them at some point Sunday.

    “It’s really choppy out there, not really surfable yet, but I think we can find a good break somewhere later,” Johnson said. “I can’t remember a storm like this.”

    Also Sunday, one of several budding storm systems in the Atlantic Ocean became Tropical Storm Emily, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was far from land, moving west in the open ocean. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Franklin formed in the eastern Caribbean. Tropical storm watches were issued for the southern coasts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

    In Sept. 1939, a tropical storm that roared into California ripped apart train tracks, tore houses from their foundations and capsized many boats, killing nearly 100 people on land and at sea.

    ___

    Lebrija reported from Ensenada, Mexico. Associated Press contributors include Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida; Ignacio Martinez in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Mark Stevenson in Mexico City; Eugene Garcia in San Diego; Ryan Sun and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Walter Berry in Phoenix.

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  • California’s big bloom aids seed collectors as climate change and wildfires threaten desert species

    California’s big bloom aids seed collectors as climate change and wildfires threaten desert species

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    JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Flowers that haven’t been seen in years bloomed across Southern California this spring after massive winter downpours, creating not only colorful landscapes but a boon for conservationists eager to gather desert seeds as an insurance policy against a hotter and drier future.

    In the Mojave Desert, seeds from parish goldeneye and brittlebush are scooped up by staff and volunteers working to build out seed banks in the hope these can be used in restoration projects as climate change pressures desert landscapes. Already this summer, the York Fire burned across the Mojave National Preserve, charring thousands of acres in the fragile ecosystem including famed Joshua trees.

    “This definitely highlights the importance of proactive seed banking as a fire management tool and how challenging it can be to keep up with the fire threats,” said Cody Hanford, joint executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust.

    Wildfires across the West can be deadly and wreak havoc on local communities, with residents forced to evacuate and homes turned to ash. But they also can destroy large tracts of land and wildlife habitat in places such as the Mojave Desert, where they are becoming more commonplace due in part to the spread of invasive grasses prone to burning quickly, fueling flames, experts said.

    Seeds long have been banked throughout the United States in a wide range of habitats. Initially, they were collected as a way to preserve rare and exotic plant species, but efforts now also focus on gathering from commonly-found plants that are increasingly in demand as climate change elevates the risk of wildfires and the growth of invasive species that can crowd out native vegetation.

    Hanford said it’s too soon to know what restoration might be needed in the Mojave National Preserve, where firefighters have largely contained the blaze. But fires like these encourage the land trust, which buys desert land for conservation, to expand its seed collection efforts, sending staff and volunteers out to gather seeds, clean and jar them for storage.

    The process is manual and time-consuming. In Joshua Tree, California, volunteers head out on hiking trails when flowers are blooming to chart where plants are located and return to collect seeds when they are ready to harvest, said Madena Asbell, the land trust’s director of plant conservation programs.

    The seeds are placed in paper bags or buckets, taken back and cleaned by hand or using an air-blowing device that removes chaff so they can be stored by the thousands in neatly labeled jars in refrigerators.

    Asbell said her organization is ramping up collection thanks to grant funding and just as the rainy winter led plants like paper bag bush to bloom for the first time in years.

    “2019 was the last wet year we had,” she said.

    Seed banking efforts are underway across the country through a program aimed at putting seeds into long-term storage and using them for projects aimed at bolstering restoration. Funding for the federal Bureau of Land Management’s program has increased in recent years, though demand for seeds to restore lands burned by wildfire or wildlife habitat far outstrips the supply, experts said.

    In California, there are more than 4,000 seed collections through this program, representing more than 1,300 species of plants. That covers about a fifth of the state’s known plant species, according to the agency.

    “We have so much land to restore and not enough seeds to restore it all,” said Katie Heineman, vice president of science & conservation at the Center for Plant Conservation.

    This year, however, presents a golden opportunity for seed banking in California due to winter storms that drenched the state, covered the mountains in snow and replenished rivers. The Chicago Botanic Garden, for example, has three times as many seed collectors in Western states this year as last, officials said.

    More collections also are being made by Bureau of Land Management crews in the Mojave Desert region, the agency said.

    One of the challenges in collecting seeds in this area is that it’s so vast, and restoration is best achieved with plants from the same general location. Seeds previously collected by the land trust therefore won’t necessarily be a fit for future restoration efforts after the York Fire, Hanford said.

    While the need for restoration isn’t unique to the West, the scale is much greater because of the size of the region’s wildfires, said Kayri Havens, chief scientist at Chicago Botanic Garden.

    “As our climate changes, places we thought in the past we wouldn’t have to restore, we’re finding out we have to restore,” Havens said. “The Mojave Desert now burns. It was not a place that had wildfire problems 30 years ago.”

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  • Barrels of drinking water for migrants walking through Texas have disappeared

    Barrels of drinking water for migrants walking through Texas have disappeared

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    HEBBRONVILLE, Texas — As one of the worst heat waves on record set in across much of the southern United States this summer, authorities and activists in South Texas found themselves embroiled in a mystery in this arid region near the border with Mexico.

    Barrels of life-saving water that a human rights group had strategically placed for wayward migrants traveling on foot had vanished.

    Usually, they are hard to miss. Labeled with the word “AGUA” painted in white, capital letters and standing about waist-high, the 55-gallon (208-liter), blue drums stand out against the scrub and grass, turned from green to a sundried brown.

    The stakes of solving this mystery are high.

    Summer temperatures can climb to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) in Texas’ sparsely populated Jim Hogg County, with its vast, inhospitable ranchlands. Migrants — and sometimes human smugglers — take a route through this county to try to circumvent a Border Patrol checkpoint on a busier highway about 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the east. More than 60 miles (96 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border, it can take several days to walk there for migrants who may have already spent weeks crossing mountains and desert and avoiding cartel violence.

    “We don’t have the luxury of losing time in what we do,” said Ruben Garza’s, an investigator with the Jim Hogg Sheriff’s Office. Tears streamed down his face as he recalled helping locate a missing migrant man who became overheated in the brush, called for help but died just moments after his rescue.

    Exact counts of those who die are difficult to determine because deaths often go unreported. The U.N. International Organization for Migration estimates almost 3,000 migrants have died crossing from Mexico to the U.S. by drowning in Rio Grande, or because of lack of shelter, food or water.

    Humanitarian groups started placing water for migrants in spots on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico in the 1990s after authorities began finding bodies of those who succumbed to the harsh conditions.

    John Meza volunteers with the South Texas Human Rights Center in Jim Hogg County, where the population of about 5,000 people is spread over 1,100 square miles (2,850 square kilometers) — larger than the state of Rhode Island. He restocks the stations with gallon jugs of water, trims away overgrown grass, and ensures the GPS coordinates are still visible on the underside of the barrel lids.

    On one of his rounds in July, Meza said, 12 of the 21 stations he maintains were no longer there.

    The Associated Press compared images captured by Google Maps over the last two years and confirmed that some barrels that were once there were gone.

    But to where?

    Wildfires are common in this part of Texas, where dry grass quickly becomes fuel. Road construction crews frequently push or move aside obstructions for their work. But as Garza, the sheriff’s investigator, walked along a path designated by GPS coordinates for the barrels, there were no signs of melted, blue plastic. And nothing indicated the heavy barrels had been moved. Though volunteers fill them only partway, they can weigh up to about 85 pounds (38 kilograms).

    The investigator drove up and down the main highway where many of the water stations were installed near private property fence lines making note of the circumstances of each missing barrel.

    Empty water bottles sat on the ground near the round impression left behind by the heavy barrel in one site. At another, the grass was trimmed, and fresh earth was laid bare to create buffers against fire.

    Garza suspected state road crews moved three barrels that had been along an unpaved road, but the Texas Department of Transportation denied it. The investigator also noted a “tremendous amount” of wildfires could be to blame. He’s also speaking with area ranchers in hopes of showing the disappearances may be a simple misunderstanding, not a crime.

    “They probably have a logical explanation,” he said, with no apparent lead.

    But in other states along the southern border, missing water stations have been ascribed to spiteful intentions.

    The group No More Deaths in 2018 released video of Border Patrol agents kicking over and pouring water out of gallon jugs left for people in the desert.

    No More Deaths said that from 2012 to 2015, it found more than 3,586 gallon jugs of water that had been destroyed in an 800-square-mile (2,072-square-kilometer) desert area in southern Arizona.

    Laura Hunter and her husband, John, started putting out water along popular smuggling routes in Southern California in the 1990s. They note their effort is not affiliated with political or religious groups, but that their work is often attacked.

    “Every single year, we have vandalism, of course, you know, people that don’t agree with what we do,” Laura Hunter said.

    The Hunters met with Eddie Canales, the executive director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, about 15 years ago and provided the design for the low-cost water stations. In light of the news, they offered some advice.

    “I would replace them all with some used barrels, just replace them all,” John Hunter said. “And then I would put a couple of cameras on those and get the guy’s license plates and his face.”

    Canales said he plans to work with volunteers to replace the missing stations in the coming days.

    The number of migrants crossing through South Texas and subsequent deaths decreased this year after President Joe Biden’s administration instituted new border polices. A medical examiner’s office who covers eleven counties including Jim Hogg has received the bodies of 85 migrants who died this year. It represents less than half the number sent to that office in 2022. Most of the migrants who died this year suffered fatal heat strokes.

    But that could change, especially if legal challenges to the Biden administration’s policies are successful.

    For now, the mystery about the barrels’ disappearance remains unsolved. But Meza, the volunteer who restocks the barrels in Jim Hogg County, plans to continue his work

    “If that was intentional, that’s a pretty malicious thing. You know what I mean?” Meza asked. “You’re saying, ‘Let these people die because I don’t want to give them access to water.’”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Anita Snow in Phoenix contributed to this report.

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  • The extreme heat wave that blasted the Southwest is abating with late arriving monsoon rains

    The extreme heat wave that blasted the Southwest is abating with late arriving monsoon rains

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    PHOENIX — A historic heat wave that turned the U.S. Southwest into a blast furnace throughout July is beginning to abate with the late arrival of monsoon rains.

    Forecasters expect that by Monday at the latest, people in metro Phoenix will begin seeing high temperatures under 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) for the first time in a month. As of Friday, the high temperature in the desert city had been at or above that mark for 29 consecutive days.

    Already this week, the overnight low at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport fell under 90 (32.2 C) for the first time in 16 days, finally allowing people some respite from the stifling heat once the sun goes down.

    Temperatures are also expected to ease in Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Death Valley, California.

    The downward trend started Wednesday night, when Phoenix saw its first major monsoon storm since the traditional start of the season on June 15. While more than half of the greater Phoenix area saw no rainfall from that storm, some eastern suburbs were pummeled by high winds, swirling dust and localized downfalls of up to an inch (2.5 centimeters) of precipitation.

    Storms gradually increasing in strength are expected over the weekend.

    Scientists calculate that July will prove to be the hottest globally on record and perhaps the warmest human civilization has seen. The extreme heat is now hitting the eastern part of the U.S, as soaring temperatures moved from the Midwest into the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, where some places are seeing their warmest days so far this year.

    The new heat records being set this summer are just some of the extreme weather being seen around the U.S. this month, such as flash floods in Pennsylvania and parts of the Northeast.

    And while relief may be on the way for the Southwest, for now it’s still dangerously hot. Phoenix’s high temperature reached 116 (46.7 C) Friday afternoon, which is far above the average temperature of 106 (41.1 C).

    “Anyone can be at risk outside in this record heat,” the fire department in Goodyear, a Phoenix suburb, warned residents on social media while offering ideas to stay safe.

    For many people such as older adults, those with health issues and those without access to air conditioning, the heat can be dangerous or even deadly.

    Maricopa County, the most populous in Arizona and home to Phoenix, reported this week that its public health department had confirmed 25 heat-associated deaths this year as of July 21, with 249 more under investigation.

    Results from toxicological tests that can takes weeks or months after an autopsy is conducted could eventually result in many deaths listed as under investigation as heat associated being changed to confirmed.

    Maricopa County confirmed 425 heat-associated deaths last year, and more than half of them occurred in July.

    Elsewhere in Arizona next week, the agricultural desert community of Yuma is expecting highs ranging from 104 to 112 (40 C to 44.4 C) and Tucson is looking at highs ranging from 99 to 111 (37.2 C to 43.9 C).

    The highs in Las Vegas are forecast to slip as low as 94 (34.4 C) next Tuesday after a long spell of highs above 110 (43.3 C). Death Valley, which hit 128 (53.3 C) in mid-July, will cool as well, though only to a still blistering hot 116 (46.7 C).

    In New Mexico, the highs in Albuquerque next week are expected to be in the mid to high 90s (around 35 C), with party cloudy skies.

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  • Phoenix’s long simmering heat poised to break records for relentless high temperatures

    Phoenix’s long simmering heat poised to break records for relentless high temperatures

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    PHOENIX — A relentless streak of temperatures hitting 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 C) or more in Phoenix is poised to smash a record for major U.S. cities, showing that Earth’s ongoing summer swelter is as persistent as it is hot. The stretch of dangerous heat tied the record Monday and is set to reach 19 days on Tuesday.

    Nighttime has offered little relief from the brutal temperatures. Phoenix’s low of 95 F (35 C) on Monday was its highest overnight low ever, smashing the previous record of 93 F (33.8 C) set in 2009. It was the eighth straight day of temperatures not falling below 90 F (32.2 C), another record.

    It’s “pretty miserable when you don’t have any recovery overnight,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Salerno.

    The length of Phoenix’s heat wave is notable even during a summer in which much of the southern United States and the world as a whole has been cooking in record temperatures, something scientists say is stoked by climate change.

    What’s going on in city at the heart of a region known as the Valley of the Sun is far worse than a short spike in the thermometer, experts said, and it poses a health danger to many.

    “Long-term exposure to heat is more difficult to withstand than single hot days, especially if it is not cooling off at night enough to sleep well,” said Katharine Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

    “This will likely be one of the most notable periods in our health record in terms of deaths and illness,” said David Hondula, chief heat officer for the City of Phoenix. “Our goal is for that not to be the case.”

    The last time Phoenix didn’t reach 110 F (43.3 C) was June 29, when it hit 108 (42.2 C). The record of 18 days above 110 that was tied Monday was first set in 1974, and it appeared destined to be shattered with temperatures forecast above that through the end of the week.

    “This is very persistent,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Isaac Smith. “We’re just going to see this streak continue it looks like.”

    No other major U.S. city has had a streak of 110 degree days or 90 degree nights longer than Phoenix, said weather historian Christopher Burt of the Weather Company.

    NOAA climate data scientists Russ Vose and Ken Kunkel found no large cities with that run of heat, but smaller places such as Death Valley and Needles in California and Casa Grande in Arizona have had longer streaks. Death Valley has had an 84-day streak of 110-degree temperatures and a 47-day streak of nighttime temperatures not going below 90, Vose said.

    Phoenix’s heat wave has both long and short-term causes, said Arizona State University’s Randy Cerveny, who coordinates weather record verification for the World Meteorological Organization.

    “The long-term is the continuation of increasing temperatures in recent decades due to human influence on climate, while the short-term cause is the persistence over the last few weeks of a very strong upper level ridge of high pressure over the western United States,” he said.

    That high pressure, also known as a heat dome, has been around the Southwest cooking it for weeks, and when it moved, it moved to be even more centered on Phoenix than ever, Smith said.

    All of the southern U.S. has been under a heat dome with temperature records shattered from California to Florida and the globe itself is the hottest its been on record for much of the summer.

    The high pressure in the Southwest also prevents cooling rain and clouds from bringing relief, Smith said. Normally, the Southwest’s monsoon season kicks in around mid-June with rain and clouds. But Phoenix has not had measurable rain since mid-March.

    “Although it is always hot in the summer in Phoenix, this heat wave is intense and unrelenting,” Jacobs said. “Unfortunately, it is a harbinger of things to come given that the most reliable projected impacts of climate change are those that are directly related to the increase in global temperatures. ”

    Since 1983, Phoenix’s average daily summer temperature has increased 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius), it’s daily high temperature has gone up 3.2 degrees (1.8 degrees Celsius) and it’s nighttime low has gone up 4.4 degrees (2.4 degrees Celsius), according to NOAA.

    “The changing climate along with urban heating are certainly exacerbating the warmer temperatures and making them more frequent,” Smith said.

    And that’s dangerous for many groups.

    “Heat waves are deadly, especially for the homeless, for people who work outdoors or for those who have inadequate air conditioning,” Jacobs said. “It is especially hard for older people and those with underlying health conditions to stay hydrated.”

    Such heat can hit Indian Country particularly hard. Jacobs said about 30% of the population of the Hopi and Navajo reservations lack running water and air conditioning and aren’t near cooling centers. That’s especially unfair because “tribal members have contributed very little to greenhouse gas concentrations,” she said.

    Another aspect of heat waves that disproportionately affects certain communities is the urban heat island effect, where cities are warming because of buildings and lack of trees and greenspace, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    A study published two years ago in the journal Nature Communications found that people of color face more extreme temperatures compared to non-Hispanic white people, and poor people must deal with hotter temperatures than rich people.

    Phoenix’s majority Hispanic neighborhoods tend to have less tree canopy than other parts of the city.

    And one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city is Edison-Eastlake, a historically Black neighborhood east of downtown that has become majority Latino, where in past years temperatures have reached as much as 10 degrees higher than other parts of the city.

    Arizona State University researchers are conducting a heat study of the neighborhood, which is home to the largest collection of public housing in Arizona, to gauge whether temperatures ease as it undergoes redevelopment aimed at better protecting residents from extreme heat. Any conclusions so far have not been made public.

    Hondula, the Phoenix heat officer, was involved in that study several years ago as a researcher at the university.

    “It’s very clear that heat has disproportionate impacts on some communities,” he said. “That’s where we can and should work.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ___

    Borenstein reported from Washington. Follow Seth Borenstein and Anita Snow on Twitter at @borenbears and @asnowreports

    ___

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Music Review: Jess Williamson’s ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’ spans the American west and human heart

    Music Review: Jess Williamson’s ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’ spans the American west and human heart

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    Jess Williamson’s fifth solo album “Time Ain’t Accidental” takes place on a lyrical road trip that unpacks America, its western landscapes, reckless storms and evanescent roots, transforming country music’s legacy into her own search for redemption, wr…

    ByAMANCAI BIRABEN Associated Press

    This cover image released by Mexican Summer shows “Time Ain’t Accidental” by Jess Williamson. (Mexican Summer via AP)

    The Associated Press

    “Time Ain’t Accidental” by Jess Williamson (Mexican Summer)

    Jess Williamson’s fifth solo album “Time Ain’t Accidental” incarnates 2023 through a lyrical road trip that unpacks America, its western landscapes, reckless storms and evanescent roots, transforming country music’s legacy into her own search for redemption.

    Merging the grit of heartbreak with the lyricism of repair, Williamson’s voice ranges like tobacco smoke ascending into electric sunrises that beam into the full moon as mellow acoustics, brass, beats and sonic twists ground the soundscapes of the winding path. Her lyrics question genres, like the lies behind her dubious love song “now that the love is gone” and they argue with classic norms of the country song, “I’m not a good woman if I leave or if I stay” and her transitions play on each other, “Whatcha take me for?” as she answers “Take me for a ride.”

    Love is both a delusion and a cure as her lyrics trace her roots in Texas, reinvention in California and all the pitstops in between. It slowly slips away in “A Few Seasons,” an ode to its loss. It’s “as pure as the universe, honest as an ashtray” in “Hunter,” her anthem for self-possession. Later, in “Roads,” she feels a hurricane in her heart, hail storm in her head, a tornado blowing through her bones for her lover.

    Her sense of self wanders from wondering if she’s “a one-time dream or a country queen” in “Topanga Two Step” and how she compares to the “women in boots, with their long hair in tassels” in “God in Everything.” Williamson roves between her wanting to leave LA, where she could “start a garden with the landlord” in “Chasing Spirits” and being “kept between the bridal and being built to run” in “I’d Come to Your Call.” Time wavers between the one sun and one moon at her fountain of her youth in “Tobacco Two Step” and the days before her broken heart when she read her lover “Raymond Carver by the pool bar like a lady” in “Time Ain’t Accidental.”

    She’s at her best when the rich details of her past morph into the surrounding terrains, metaphors like the stormy weather of love that fade into waterways of searching for closure. Mapping her heart along the desert zephyrs, country stores and two-step bars, Williamson ventures through heartache in all its pain and glory.

    ___

    More AP music reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/music-reviews

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  • Sudanese fleeing clashes flood port city, borders with Egypt

    Sudanese fleeing clashes flood port city, borders with Egypt

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    CAIRO — Sudanese fleeing the fighting between rival generals in their capital flooded an already overwhelmed city on the Red Sea and Sudan’s northern borders with Egypt, as explosions and gunfire echoed Monday in Khartoum.

    Many exhausted Sudanese and foreigners arrived in Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport, joining thousands who have waited for days to be evacuated out of the chaos-stricken nation. Others have been driven in packed buses and trucks, seeking shelter in Egypt, Sudan’s northern neighbor.

    “Much of the capital has become empty,” said Abdalla al-Fatih, a Khartoum resident, “all (residents of) our street fled the war.”

    The fighting, now in its third week, has turned Khartoum and its neighboring city of Omdurman into a battlefield. Fierce clashes taking place inside residential neighborhoods that have become “ghost areas,” residents say.

    The conflict, which capped months of worsening tensions, pits the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, against a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

    Al-Fatih’s family managed to get out of Khartoum over the weekend after they spent the past two weeks trapped in their home in Khartoum’s neighborhood of Kafouri, a major flashpoint since the fighting broke out on April 15.

    They arrived in Port Sudan late Monday, after an exhausting 20-hour trip, he said. There, they found thousands, including many women and children, camping outside the port area. Many had been there for more than a week, with no food and other services, he said.

    Port Sudan has become a hub for foreign governments to evacuate their citizens air and sea.

    At the congested crossing points with Egypt, thousands of families have waited for days inside buses or sought temporary shelter in the border city of Wadi Halfa to finalize their paperwork to be allowed into Egypt.

    Yusuf Abdel-Rahman is a Sudanese university student who crossed into Egypt along his family, through the Ashkit crossing point late Monday. They spent their night at a community hostel in Egypt’s southern city of Aswan, and plan to board a train to Cairo later Tuesday, he said.

    Abdel-Rahman’s family went first to the Arqin crossing point over the weekend. It was overcrowded and they couldn’t reach the customs area. They then decided to move to the Ashkit crossing after they heard from people there that the crossing would be easier, he said.

    “It’s a chaotic situation (in Arqin),” he said over the phone. “Women, children and patients are stranded in the desert with no food, no water.”

    Abdel-Rahman reported widespread destruction and looting particularly in upscale neighborhood in the capital. He said a neighbor told them by phone said armed men in RSF uniform stormed their home in Khartoum’s Amarat neighborhood on Friday, a day after they fled the capital. Many Sudanese have taken to social media to complain that their homes were stormed and looted by armed men.

    “We are lucky” that they didn’t at home at the time of storming,” he said. “We could be ended up dead bodies.”

    Tens of thousands have already fled Sudan to neighboring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Ethiopia. And the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that the number could surpass 800,000.

    “We hope it doesn’t come to that, but if violence doesn’t stop we will see more people forced to flee Sudan seeking safety,” he wrote on Twitter Monday.

    Early Monday sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed though many parts of the capital, with fierce clashes taking place around the military’s headquarters, the international airport and the Republican Palace in Khartoum, residents reported. The military’s warplanes were seen flying overhead across the capital, they said.

    The fighting has come despite both sides declared Sunday a second, three-day extension of a humanitarian cease-fire to allow safe corridors for healthcare workers and aid agencies working in the capital.

    “The war never stopped,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate. “Doctors can’s move safely. Hospitals were still occupied.”

    Morgues across the capital are overcrowded with dead bodies and people were still unable to collect their dead to bury, he said. Many injured also did not have access to hospitals, he added.

    At least 436 civilians have been killed and more than 1,200 injured since the fighting began, according to figures on Monday by the Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. As of a week ago, the Sudanese Health Ministry had counted at least 530 people killed, including civilians and combatants, with another 4,500 wounded, but those figures haven’t been updated since.

    The power struggle has derailed Sudan’s efforts to restore its democratic transition, which was derailed in Oct. 2021 when then allied generals, Burhan and Dagalo, removed a western backed transitional government in a coup.

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