“Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening me!” --Queen

Californians live a charmed life. Despite the recent drought troubles the state has been facing (recently quelled by a rather potent El Niño that dominated this past winter), they can’t help but be happy that they enjoy sunny, temperate weather almost two- thirds of the year. I used to live in Oakland (until very recently), where for seven or eight months out of the year, the sun is shining, bathing the region in warm light that holds a steady daytime temperature between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. As a native New Englander, the more nostalgic side of me ached for the glow of autumn foliage and snowy nights by the fireplace, but my more practical side was pretty content living in a place where it is basically spring all the time.

I only lived there for a few years but I noticed a shift in my sensibilities when it came to the weather. Whenever I would visit my father in Vermont for the holidays, I was noticeably more susceptible to complaining about the biting winter winds of the alpine climate. My friend Bruce (who also lives in Vermont) constantly made fun of me for complaining about the temperature as it plummeted towards the single digits.  Generally I run very warm, and I sweat all the time, even just thinking about warm places, like saunas or restaurant kitchens or old subway cars.  I thrive in places like beer caves, movie theaters, and that plastic igloo that used to be at Epcot where they served sodas from all over the world - places about which people generally say, "It could be chilly - think I'll grab a sweater."  The Bay Area - especially near the beaches on the Pacific side - is heavenly and cool.  It never got too hot.  Which is great, because when I am hot, I am miserable.

It must seem strange to think that someone who is admittedly so adverse to high temperatures would subject himself to four nonstop days of some of the hottest weather imaginable, especially when all of that time is spent outside in a field, most of it under the sun. Yes, Bonnaroo is notoriously sweltering – one of the most cited reasons as to why many people I know will never attend.  But not all festivals take place on the surface of the sun as Bonnaroo does. My favorite festival, the Primavera Sound Festival, takes place in Barcelona right around Memorial Day, which basically guarantees perfect weather as the festival’s proximity to the Mediterranean keeps things mild and temperate. Another favorite of mine, San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival held every August in Golden Gate Park, also enjoys a much different climate. Sometimes it’s sunny and warm, others it’s freezing cold and foggy. But even the cool mist of San Francisco summers holds its surprises, as one of the worst sunburns ever inflicted upon me happened on a day just like that: mid-50s, wet, cloudy, and painful.

People starting to flee as squall lines approach Treasure Island in 2016.

Large-scale outdoor events are often held rain or shine, and for good reason. There’s no way any festival organizer is going to know the exact forecast on the days their event is to be held when the festival itself is eight months away, so precautions are taken to circumvent the more unpleasant consequences of a stormy day. The organizers are (usually) prepared for everything, and frankly, if you’re planning on participating in these sorts of events, you should be too.

In the eleven years I attended Bonnaroo, I’d say about 85% of the time I was sweating my ass off because of nightmarish heat and humidity. For those who have never been to the American South in the summer, I’m going to tell you right now that those conditions are not for the faint of heart. When you have somewhere inside to stay, it’s not so bad, because everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) is air-conditioned. They have to be; otherwise people would be dropping like flies. I don’t know how people survived down here before A/C was invented, because the summers are absolutely brutal.

I live in Asheville now, which is nestled in the cradle of the Smoky Mountains in Western North Carolina.  The summer here is pretty hot, but not unbearable.  I lived in New Orleans for four years, which is hotter and WAY more humid than it is here, or Tennessee even for that matter. If you imagine taking a cross section of the city of New Orleans, it is actually shaped like a bowl, in regards to sea level, etc.  It is flanked to the south by the Mississippi River and on the northern end sits a massive brackish lake called Lake Pontchartrain. Every summer moisture evaporates off of these two bodies of water—not to mention the Gulf of Mexico, which is also close by—and while some of it turns into showers and storms (which happen almost daily, offering brief yet sometimes violent relief in the form of twenty-minute deluges), a good deal of that moisture is skimmed off the surface of these two bodies of water into the bowl of New Orleans and just...sits. It’s the most humid place I’ve ever been, and I’ve spent four weeks in the Costa Rican rainforest during the wet season.

I survived only because there was central air in my apartment, as there was in fundamentally every other enclosed building in the city. In New Orleans—and I’m sure this is true for much of the South—during the summertime the city is essentially a ghost town. Only the hardiest of European tourists are visiting and the only time anyone is outside is if they are walking to or from their car, or if they’re floating down a river on an inner tube drinking beer (which is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, by the way). I never had to imagine life without A/C down there because it was literally everywhere.

New Orleans may have widespread A/C, but that’s because their summer is about twice as long as those in more temperate climates – almost half the year. While living there, in my lovely yet terribly insulated apartment in Mid-City, I would dread the summer months; not just because of the heat, but because I knew that my energy bills were about to skyrocket. That’s the downside of older architecture – it’s beautiful, yes, but not economically feasible, as most of my money seemed to float away just as easily as my cool central air would fly through the cracks surrounding my windows and porch door. I was grateful of course – it being the first place I have ever lived that had air- conditioning (my mother once said it was “bad karma”), and without it, I would have been admittedly miserable. Thankfully I never had to experience such discomfort...well, almost never.

Hurricane Isaac hit Louisiana just before Labor Day 2012, and most of the city lost power (except for the French Quarter; they never seem to lose power), yet most neighborhoods bounced back within a day or two. My neighborhood had no power for SIX STRAIGHT DAYS, and during the last of those days, my block and the neighboring block were the only ones without electricity. Every single house and business around me had lights on, had TVs on, had hot water heaters and microwaves and A/C on. Meanwhile, I had all the windows open (with no screens, so there were bugs everywhere), and the only thing to give me a sliver of comfort at night was a 13” x 13” battery operated fan that I kept propped next to my face. Each morning I would wake up in my underwear in a pool of my own sweat wondering how the hell anybody lived in that climate without A/C. To this day it still boggles my mind. I guess people were just better at dealing with their environment back then. Either that or I am just a big wimp.

Compared to those six days, most of the Bonnaroo heat I have endured doesn’t even come close, but it’s still quite intense. Average Bonnaroo temperatures hang around in the 86-93°F range, and with high humidity that can feel close to 100°F.¹² Some years have been hotter than this average, with dangerous heat indices closing in on upwards of 105°F, and there have been one or two years where the highs have barely broke 85°F. In 2012, the event came after a massive cold front had passed through the region, and the highs for the first few days were in the upper 70s. I think that year was perhaps the only year I consistently slept well in all of my time at Bonnaroo, because the early morning sun wasn’t turning our tent into a Turkish bathhouse at seven AM¹³.

¹² This is unlike Coachella, which has a “dry heat,” which always seemed like a weird way of saying that one heat is “better” than the other. I can’t really tell the difference—I’m still hot, sweaty and uncomfortable, so I don’t think it really matters what “kind” of heat it is; it sucks either way.
¹³ Manchester, Tennessee lies just over the Central/Eastern Time Zone line, so the sun sets much earlier than normal—allowing for some amazing evenings at Bonnaroo—but in turn, it comes up an hour earlier too, and wastes very little time in heating up the campgrounds.

The average day at Bonnaroo (when it actually is sunny and hot and not pouring rain) requires heavy rehydration and often includes naps beneath the shadier trees within Centeroo (especially if you’re going to bed late at night and the sun rudely stirs you from your sleep mere minutes after dawn). In recent years Bonnaroo has included a mini water park on the grounds (called Splash-A-Roo) consisting of a waterslide and slip-n-slide, and the iconic Mushroom Fountain near the This Tent is always a popular destination on balmy afternoons.  The water it spews is recycled however, and turns a pretty gnarly shade of brown towards the end of the weekend, especially if there hasn’t been any showers or thunderstorms to quell the immense dust clouds that form as Tennessee breezes sweep across the sun-parched fields.

On the other end of the spectrum, Bonnaroo has also seen some rather intense weather. In 2009—my fifth year at the festival—six of us drove down from New York in two cars, and once we hit Tennessee a few isolated severe storms started popping up across the state. As we went along, I kept pulling up local Doppler radar scans – a veritable feat in those days when Internet on phones was fairly uncommon, not to mention very expensive and crazy slow. It was mostly clear for the majority of our journey, only encountering a few small bubbles of reds and oranges surrounded by halos of yellow and green along the way.

I became fascinated with weather at a very young age, especially extreme weather. My parents had a vast collection of old Time-Life books, each encased in hard black binding and focusing on specific subjects. We had one on Volcanoes, one on The Galapagos...and my favorite, the one about Tornadoes. I don’t know what it is about tornadoes that drew me in...maybe it was the sheer power of thoughtless destruction, or the aesthetic, or the utter impossibility that I would ever encounter one. Maybe it was The Wizard of Oz. Whatever the reason, I was terribly intrigued, and terribly frightened. Even later in life, whenever there was a tornado watch in New Orleans, I would feel my heart leap up into my larynx and I would have to reassure myself that I would be OK.¹⁴ I would watch the Doppler radar like a paranoid hawk, searching for bow echoes and wall clouds, a skill I learned by obsessively watching The Weather Channel. My biggest fear was that a tornado would hit Bonnaroo, as there was virtually nowhere to seek shelter on the vast, flat grounds. Lightning was also something I was not a fan of, due to its deadly power and unpredictable nature.  ¹⁴ Though New Orleans exists outside “Tornado Alley,” and hasn’t seen any truly destructive twisters, this is a fairly common occurrence, especially in the spring months and within tropical cyclones. My apartment was also not an ideal place to ride one out, as there was no basement and all my doors (even the interior closet doors) were mostly glass.

A mysterious Tennesse sky.

Thankfully we got to the grounds without running into any bow echoes or wall clouds. After setting up our camp and having a few drinks, the six of us—my friends Pookie, Carol, Ramona, Amelia, Lenore, and myself walked to Centeroo a couple hours or so before sunset to catch some music. The weather was pleasant enough—not too hot but still quite warm—and we had a great time hitting up a show or two (the incomparable Janelle Monáe was performing that evening), and afterwards we headed back to camp for a little more R&R.

The sun was nearing the horizon as we traced our steps back down Shakedown to our site, and after impulsively buying some LSD off a friend of a friend I had run into on the way back (and then immediately taking it), I spent my entire leisurely walk back looking at the clouds in the distance. The drugs came on much quicker than expected, and I thought my eyes playing tricks on me, as one cloud foamed into fruition right before my eyes. It wasn’t until I saw its colossal frame eclipse the setting sun—setting the cloud aflame with a luminous vermillion halo—that I realized the cloud was not only growing, it was approaching. I brushed it off as no big deal and went back to enjoying the company of my friends.

Amelia, Lenore, Ramona, and Carol were all first-timers that year, and so I wanted them all to feel relaxed and really get into the Bonnaroo spirit, as did Pookie, my best friend since high school who has come to Bonnaroo with me every year I’ve gone (save for the first). Ramona, Pookie, and Carol all like to sit and drink and talk, while Amelia and Lenore—who have been good friends with one another for a very long time—always opt for the more adventurous options. They’re the kind of girls who want to explore the entire grounds, even the parts in the woods that are private property and are thus off- limits to attendees, just so they can find a river to splash around in or something. So that’s exactly what they did. They grabbed the rubber boots they had purchased at Wal- Mart a few hours prior, slid them on, and disappeared down one of the dusty paths into the sunset.

After an hour or so, the sky was past twilight and entering into the realm of night. The other three girls and I sat and drank underneath our canopy as we planned our schedules for the weekend. Occasionally I would say something nonsensical inspired by the acid coursing through my veins, and they would make fun of me and we’d all have a giggle. I was most certainly tripping by that point, and all of a sudden I felt much colder than I had a few seconds before. I shrugged it off as a side effect of the trip as LSD makes your body experience innumerable strange bodily sensations, and gently stroked the tiny goose bumps forming on my forearm.

“Is anyone else suddenly really cold?” Ramona asked. I love Ramona because she speaks her mind and isn’t afraid to question the trivial stuff that bothers people unconsciously. She holds physical/personal comfort in very high regard, an essential element of true happiness. She’s also a very keen observer.

“Corey, you’ve got goose bumps, are you cold too?”

She must’ve seen me stroking my arm. “Yeah I am, actually,” which I said with a snicker. The goose bumps were tickling my fingertips.

Out of nowhere, a forceful breeze started to erupt around us, and I felt tiny flecks of moisture pecking at my neck, arms and legs, forming crystalline fragments that caught the light from the lantern dangling from the canopy, giving the illusion of wet glitter. I was so entranced by my new shiny veneer that I was totally oblivious to the lightning that had apparently lit up the sky, prompting a synchronized gasp of “WHOA!” from my three friends. By the time I tore my gaze away from the beads on my arm to spot the source of their surprise, an earsplitting BOOM resounded across the heavens, which made the whole area vibrate violently. I turned slowly back to my friends and simply said, “Ohhh shit.”

The rain came next, as if some angry god had begun repeatedly flushing the toilet down on top of us. I was immediately drenched, as I was sitting near the edge of the canopy, and so I did my best to move under the cover of the overhang before soliciting anymore unnecessary wetness.   But the sudden movement of my leg was poorly gauged, and in catching the edge of my own chair I toppled over onto the ground. I was on the ground for maybe ten seconds before I tried to get up, as I was tripping balls and thus laughing ballistically at my own foolishness. When I saw the concern in the eyes of the other three, I pulled my shit together (well, as best as I could – this is LSD we’re talking about, not huffs off your grandma’s Redi-Whip bottles) and managed to boost myself up to follow their gaze towards the west, right about where the sun had been masked by the fortress of the cloud I had seen boiling up. The rain abruptly ceased, and out of curiosity, I peered out from under the canopy to see something I had never seen before, tripping or otherwise - a swirling, low-hanging cloud resembling a horizontal column was barreling towards us.

It looked awesome.

“Wooooow coooooool,” I managed, not being able to turn my focus away.

The others were not so sure.  “Uhhh no, Corey, that is DEFINITELY not good,” Ramona said in an eerie tone, and pulled me by the back part of my shirt’s neckline to ensure I stayed underneath the cover of the canopy. As the tumbling cloud passed over us, there was a brief moment of unnerving calm.

And then …  all hell broke loose.

One of the big storms earlier younger brothers whom we encountered driving in.

As the cloud finished soaring overheard, the wind that was propelling it forward slammed into our camp. It knocked me backwards into Ramona and we both almost fell right over the ice chest that lay at the center of our sitting area. Carol and Pookie made a beeline for Carol’s mammoth gold Ford Explorer and hid inside just as the rain returned, more furious than ever. The wind was making it difficult to breathe, as if it was sucking all the air out of my lungs. Stunned, Ramona and I exchanged quick glances before we discerned that the canopy was being pulled up out of the ground by the constant gales. The sky threw down blinding forks of lightning, maybe a few hundred yards away from where we stood, and they popped and cracked as they hit the ground, immediately followed by deafening roars of thunder that raced over the flat open campgrounds like tsunamis of sound. We each grabbed part of the canopy’s frame to hold it in place (probably not the wisest idea to grab onto a metal frame during an electrical storm, but we did it anyway). Pookie and Carol emerged from their car to hold down the other two corners, and we traded screams of terror for each lightning bolt and billowing wind gust sent in our direction.

It was at this time that Lenore and Amelia appeared out of nowhere, and while Lenore held onto the center of the canopy, Amelia leapt onto the roof of my SUV, stood straight up and stretched her arms out wide, laughing maniacally in the face of the storm. We all looked on as I heard Carol yell over the din of the storm, “What the hell is that crazy bitch doing?!” I turned to Ramona, “If she gets struck by lightning, we’ll all probably get killed too.”

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, as if a conductor had walked out in the middle of conducting a symphony. The grounds fell silent for a few seconds as everyone processed what had just happened, and then it was as if everyone in a mile radius exhaled at the same time. The field itself seemed to sigh with the rest of us, and as the enormous anvil cloud retreated to the east, we were treated to a dazzling light show, electric fireworks erupting inside as it chugged away from Bonnaroo.

We later found out that a tornado warning had been issued for that very storm, and that a funnel cloud had been seen forming right over the main venue. After picking up the pieces and taking a few well-deserved shots, we left our humble abode for Centeroo to check out synth-pop darlings Passion Pit, only to be caught in a similar but drastically less intense storm on the way back.

After sprinting through the rain for the last quarter mile back to the car from Shakedown, we piled inside and Ramona looked at me, almost completely breathless, tremors shaking heavy droplets of water from her curly hair.

“Please tell me it’s not like this every year,” she wheezed, with an exasperated look on her face.

“No, definitely not,” I coughed. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” And thankfully, I haven’t since.

Well, I shouldn’t say that.

What I should say is that I haven’t been as surprised and frightened by a weather event while attending a festival ever since that fearful night in ’09.  But there was another incident, not too long ago, that almost made me swear off open-air music events entirely.  It was the only one other time I have been totally caught off guard by a weather event at a festival, and it was one of the most bizarre, surreal, and disappointing outdoor experiences I have ever endured.

Remember when I said that Californians lead a charmed life when it comes to the weather?  It’s true…about 95% of the time.  It’s a weird place, climate-wise.  For instance, the Bay Area rarely ever gets thunderstorms.  It only rains a few months out of the year (the rest of the country calls this  “winter,” while in the Golden State it has been deemed simply “the rainy season”), but when it actually does rain, it RAINS.  Thick, bulky bands of moisture tumble in from the Pacific Ocean from around mid- to late-October up until the ‘lamb’ side of March, usually finding its steadiest, heaviest rains right after New Years.  See, even in California, January is the most miserable month of the year.  They’re not so different from the rest of the country after all.

Anywho, the year was 2016 and it was October.  One of my very favorite festivals – the Treasure Island Music Festival – was primed to commence its final edition at its home location: its namesake, the manmade Treasure Island, which sits right in the very middle of the Bay.  Since its inception in 2007, the festival occupied the space on the island’s southwestern side, offering beautiful views of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, as well as the entirety of San Francisco’s main downtown skyline.  The event lasted two days – a Saturday and Sunday right around the time of Columbus Day – and boasted affordable tickets, local flair, and a system of scheduling acts on two stages in such a way that no sets overlapped.  It was brilliant.  In 2016 however, the festival was forced to relocate to the other side of the island, the east side, due to development and construction that was set to begin earlier that year.¹⁵  Still the festival promised the same relaxed atmosphere, the same schedule, the same fun diversions, and some new additions as well – including a midway-like pier with games and rides and gorgeous views of the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, Berkeley Marina, and the eastern shoreline of the Bay.

This was to be mine and Carol’s (who I was living with at the time) fifth TIMF together, and so we were pumped and ready.  No matter that it was on the other side of the island, we thought, we got this!  It is known for being such a low stress event that it didn’t even bother our crew – Carol, myself, Pookie, my friend from grad school Fred, and my longtime friend Stacy and her husband – that there was a good chance of rain in the weekend’s forecast.  It rained the very first year I went, in 2010, and it was no big deal, so why would this be different?

Well not only were the new grounds confusing, cramped, and poorly thrown together at what seemed like the last minute, but the rain that I mentioned before?  Yeah, it was more like an unrelenting squall that tore through the petite island compound like shotgun buckshot through wet toilet paper.  Not only did the endless deluge make nearly all the attendees scatter like dandelion seeds (especially those who had paid no attention to the weather and only brought the bikini they were wearing and maybe an extra pair of dollar store flip-flops), but it totally flooded the grounds.  The grounds, mind you, were not actual earth and dirt like the previous ones had been.  Oh no.  This side of the island was almost completely made of concrete, so to add a little softness, a little touch of park/nature/greenery/whatever, the organizers decided to lay a whole bunch of sod and astroturf over the concrete.  So when the rain came down in gallons, there was no Earth to soak it up…just flimsy strips of grass and dirt that fell apart immediately, coating the whole area with a giant mud puddle.  Being in the press I sought shelter in the media tent – a fool’s errand as I would soon learn that there was no dry ground there either.  And as the rain and wind pounded the area for hours, we brave few stayed as long as we could bear it as act after act cancelled their sets or cut them short, much to the chagrin of the remaining patrons, as well as the artists themselves.

The next day, everyone went ballistic.  People were flooding the event’s Facebook page – as well as those owned by Another Planet Entertainment and Noise Pop, who put the festival together each year – with complaints and threats and demands for refunds and/or retribution.  It’s as if no one had told them to be prepared and that the event was rain or shine.  Either that or they forgot to read the literature on the website that basically outlined everything anyone needed to know beforehand JUST IN CASE THAT SORT OF THING HAPPENS.  Granted, it was more extreme than I would have ever imagined, and the fact that some really good people cancelled their sets due to the mess that was seemingly not being taken care of as it happened (but really, what can you do in the middle of a flippin’ maelstrom?) was a huge bummer… but all was not lost.  It was actually a pleasant surprise the next day when there was almost NOBODY there, not to mention we got several hours of great weather (Deafheaven made a rainbow appear!) before we were smacked with another squall line in the evening that knocked James Blake’s set out of reach (this time, due to the wind, not the rain).  It turned out to be a great weekend, especially the second day for the reasons I mentioned, but also because I rented a locker and basically brought everything I would need for a nuclear winter, and then some.

The aforementioned Deafheaven rainbow.

Extreme weather is a possibility at any festival, whether it’s the howling dust storms of Burning Man, or surprise summertime thunderstorms charging into Chicago’s Lollapalooza from Lake Michigan. At a recent Voodoo Festival (an annual event in New Orleans that happens around Halloween), there was so much rain and mud that the festival cancelled its final day.  This has also happened at Panorama (another NYC event), Governors Ball, Electric Zoo (wow…these are all NYC events actually)… Most events will carry on regardless (ha, see above), and that’s why preparation is key. Now that many of us have smartphones, we have the luxury of early warnings and the ability to track inclement weather. The outdoor element of festivals is crucial to the experience, as it allows attendees to commune with the air and the sunshine while basking in the gorgeous surrender music provides its devotees. Whether its 100 degrees and humid or cloudy with a chance of tornado, everything can change without a moment’s notice.

The elements unfortunately do not give a damn about your good time, and always have the potential to rain on your parade (pun so intended). But when the sun shines and the weather is beautiful and the band you’ve been dreaming about seeing for years is finally right in front of you playing your favorite song, it’s easy to believe that fortune is beaming down on you, singing along with you and the band as you squint, smiling, into the sky above.

¹⁵It was also announced that following the 2016 event, the festival would have to be moved to a different location altogether.  The festival took a brief hiatus in 2017 but will be making its return this fall at its new home in Oakland, at the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.

The Journey Continues Tomorrow ... Stay Tuned.