BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. — A quick mental exercise: Imagine a bowl of oatmeal. Now, imagine that same bowl of oatmeal if it were 7 miles wide — so wide that, if you stood on the rim of the bowl, you’d just barely be able to make out the opposite rim hovering over the horizon. Finally, imagine trying to walk across the surface of mushy, wet oats, crossing your fingers that no oat water soaks through your shoes. If you can picture that, you have some sense of what it was like at Burning Man on Tuesday night. 

For the second time this week, a rainstorm turned the Black Rock Desert into the world’s largest bowl of oatmeal. With the desert’s surface softened into clay, Burning Man’s gates closed again on Tuesday night, and at the time of writing, they had only just reopened. Some Burning Man attendees opted to hunker down in their RVs and wait out hostile weather patterns. Others chose to double down and party harder, as evidenced by the clusters of muddy, bare feet at the makeshift bars around the festival.

The muddy Burning Man playa in Black Rock City, Nev., on Aug. 26, 2025.

A Mercedes-Benz G-class is covered in mud on the Burning Man playa in Black Rock City, Nev., on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025.

The muddy Burning Man playa in Black Rock City, Nev., on Aug. 26, 2025.

Mud is everywhere. Mud cakes the floors of the portable toilets, the tarps under shade structures, the bottoms of boots and the insides of tents. Splatters of mud cling to bare........

© SFGate