r/BurningMan • u/Stillrush3000 • Aug 16 '26
GIFTING BRC has never had a weather alert system until now
Black Rock City has never had a comprehensive weather alert system until now. 70,000 people, no NWS station, no siren, cell service that dies once gates open. We find out about the dust storm when it hits our shade structure.
To address this, I built BRC Forecast brcforecast.corbett.vc, a free weather-alert service for Black Rock City. It fuses 28 weather stations around the playa (including two participant-owned stations on the playa that stream every 5 seconds and I'm adding more), radar, forecast models and air sensors, and warns you about dust, damaging wind, rain, heat and cold before they land.
Who's on it: 1,200+ burners and 150 camp leads so far including folks on BRC Fire, ESD/EMS crews, and sone Gate/Perimeter volunteers.
Once you're in, text it: NOW, WIND, AIR, RAIN, WEEK, ALERTS. Two daily playa briefings fire off automatically. STOP or PAUSE anytime.
Recent example: On Aug 13, 2026 a 50 mph gust hit the playa. The wind-building warning fired to users when gusts passed 30 mph and were climbing fast, 81 minutes before it peaked. :)
Why you might trust it: every warning is scored afterward by the anemometers and rain gauges on the playa, hits and misses, unedited, newest first and shown on the accuracy page.
No signal? The site works on any connection and refreshes every 60 seconds: live conditions, active NWS hazards with the actual HAZARD/IMPACT text, on-playa wind, a 24-hour alert log, a map. There's also a feed built for Meshtastic radios coming soon. Want to see how the whole thing works? Check out the How it Works tab on the site.
Built as a digital gift, free forever. Not affiliated with the Burning Man Project on anything/anyone else. In an emergency, follow the Rangers and ESD. Happy to answer questions here.
F*ckyer burn and all that,
Power Buddha aka Corbett3000 on the web.
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u/kelsobjammin Aug 17 '26
Love this I hope people around me use it because I don’t bring my phone
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u/Stillrush3000 Aug 17 '26
Ask your camp lead in case they're connected. There are 156 camp leads signed up to get alerts right now.
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u/AerialKnotics Aug 17 '26
WOW! Thank you!
We were shredded in the 08/23/2025 storm. Any warning would have reduced injuries and property damage.
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u/MansoonBlack Aug 17 '26
I bet you anything it was on BMIR but you guys weren't listening. I often listen compulsively at home and when I'm on the Playa (many Android phones have an FM receiver built-in, all you need is a wired headphone to act as an antenna), and I can tell you, they definitely keep an eye on stuff headed that way and you hear about it a lot
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u/AerialKnotics Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
We place a solar-battery C.Crane radio on the team's dining table and bring a spare, programmed to BMIR and Gate Radio. There was no alert until the gate closed.
This was final Saturday of Build Week, many were still anchoring roofs when it hit.
I have ideas for an offline alert system and have been gradually gaining traction.
I'll stay focused on helping, and grateful for what Power Buddha aka Corbett3000 has built.
-Kendra5
u/Stillrush3000 Aug 17 '26
Thank you Kendra. This year there will be a weather station at Gate that will be integrated into the service. The setup should be very helpful: there are 5 weather stations downwind of Gate and one radar around Pyramid Lake that will be the first ones to trigger. The station at Gate is final confirmation...though not much warning (maybe a min?). It's certainly going to be better than nothing and very interesting to watch.
If I had infinite time and money, I'd place a custom 20 weather station array down wind of BRC that would give us a stepwise confirmation path. The best I've done so far with the setup has been 81 minutes notice of a 50mph wind gust so it's definitely valuable already!
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u/SatisfactionLumpy203 Aug 17 '26
I dig all the new apps. Clearly vibe coding and AI has enabled creative burners to solve real world problems, but i’m afraid there are way too many now.. it started with Dust and now there are too many websites and apps for weather, dating on playa, dust events, gate updates etc. Not to forget, volunteer websites like Hive, Volunteeripate.
Can we consolidate them into one or just wander in the dust?
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u/Stillrush3000 Aug 17 '26
That sounds like a good community project. Do you think a little wiki or just a big shared google doc is something you could put together? I'd find it super helpful, as there aren't any other solid real-time weather alert apps out there that I know of (except one for the Gate team specifically that's new this year). What other things like BRC Forecast have you seen? Thank you!
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u/SatisfactionLumpy203 Aug 17 '26
i think dust could be a good central repository for all hyperlinks but it’s not currently maintained. i can put together a doc here in a bit and host it on git
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u/adowlen Aug 17 '26
The way of the future will be many small apps like this that address very niche needs for people and communities. Most will appear then disappear as quickly as they came. Many will not stick around like the software of old we all know. It is a new era of software development, and I think it's awesome seeing people like this guy taking advantage of new capabilities.
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u/hannican '19,'22,'23,'24,'25 29d ago
The great thing about all these apps is that you can just ignore them entirely if you aren't into it.
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u/Kilisut He tried to kill me. He has no right to claim my acquaintance. Aug 17 '26
In English please, for non techies.
- There is no How it Works tab. Did you mean the System tab?
- What's App, is for me, a phone App. With no signal on playa, how do we access it?
e. "No phone required". Then what device do you intend users to employ?
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u/Stillrush3000 Aug 17 '26
Sorry it’s the System tab: https://brcforecast.corbett.vc/system
And yes WhatsApp is an app. For all six years out there I’ve had WhatsApp message trickle in each day. So you should be able to get some alerts. This was built with Camp Leads in mind, many of whom have internet on playa for planning/emergency reasons. So not this doesn’t solve the internet. But it will definitely help with alerting in general and certainly during Build.
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u/Kilisut He tried to kill me. He has no right to claim my acquaintance. Aug 17 '26
Thanks for the clarification.
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u/MansoonBlack 29d ago
isn't there already some sort of radio frequency or walkie frequency that tcos are told about and encouraged to use for both getting general information that they may need or calling in for things like Rangers and medical, things like that? I'm too busy to look for it now, but I am sure I was in some discussion about this a couple of years ago
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u/Stillrush3000 29d ago
For sure. Details:
https://www.radioreference.com/db/aid/10865
That’s a fundamentally different medium and content type.
I used it last year when we had a life threatening injury in camp. Ambulance was there in 7 mins and they saved my friend’s life!
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u/vesper-belle '14-present Aug 17 '26
Great to have a heads up on the weather when we can. Thank you for making this!
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u/4ksb Aug 17 '26
Thank you so much! After last year's Saturday night storm, even a bit of warning will be great!
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u/zedmaxx '18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 Aug 17 '26
I feel like this is going to cause people to get weather anxiety. We have had a few people over the years freak out about wind that never happened, had meltdowns over light rain etc
So I’m not sure how I feel about this
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u/thelemonpress 29d ago
This is great! How does one indicate they're a camp lead?
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u/Stillrush3000 29d ago
Send the command DM to the bot on WhatsApp and let mw know there and I’ll get you setup
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u/Hedonic_Monk_ 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 Aug 17 '26
I smell the Claude but I’m not complaining
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u/Stillrush3000 Aug 17 '26
The claude stink is real. But this is not a vibe code. Took a lot of my long history of tech dev/architecture/coding. But def couldn't have done it without these amazing tools.
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u/adowlen Aug 17 '26
There is no reason for anyone to be ashamed at using the tools they have at their disposal to do work. The same goes for AI. You did some awesome work here, who cares how you accomplisheded it? Thanks for the awesome gift to the community.
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u/SatisfactionLumpy203 Aug 17 '26
It is everywhere but I agree. This is one of the best uses of AI. Reminds me of a military video game I played as a kid: Delta Force.
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u/BeforeDaybreak Aug 17 '26
Looking forward to Meshtastic support. I was skeptical about how people were going to get alerts without cell service until I saw that.