Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Culture

Climate Change Is Canceling America’s Beloved Outdoor Concerts

A summer tradition is getting fried.

Concert canceled.
Heatmap Illustration

In retrospect, perhaps it was the wrong choice of words. “Gulley Park Concert Series set to heat up the summer,” a local news headline advertised on May 26, when the high in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was a pleasant 83 degrees and “heating up” was still just an innocent journalistic cliché.

But by late June, with the Fayetteville heat index pushing into the triple-digits, the prior phrasing became, suddenly, ironic. “Gulley Park Concert canceled due to extreme heat,” a new headline soon read.

It isn’t a story unique to Fayetteville, though. With more than 2,300 heat records shattered since June 10 and some two-thirds of the population under heat advisories last week, outdoor concerts — that wholesome American summer tradition — are being canceled left and right.

In Austin, the city’s oldest performing arts group made the “hard decision” to cancel a July 9 show “due to extreme heat.” Then it canceled its July 16 show. Then its July 23 show. Then its July 30 show. (The August 6-20 shows remain “TBD”).

The show also won’t go on in Phoenix, where the remaining Saturday night Sunset Concert Series performances for the summer have all been axed.

Over in the Midwest, a July 28 outdoor concert in Mount Healthy, Ohio, was likewise canceled “due to excessive heat and humidity,” according to a message posted on the city website, alongside a cautionary illustration of an overheating camel.

In Omaha, a Jazz on the Green performance last week was rescheduled, optimistically, for mid-August, while would-be attendees of a Finding Dixie concert were redirected, more prudently, to the country band’s return performance at the end of October.

And in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a municipal band’s concert was also canceled.

The East wasn’t spared either, as the heat wave last week caused cancelations across New Jersey and New York City that felled, among others, the Hazlet Pops community band outdoor concert, Nutley and Netcong’s respective Concerts in the Park, and the entirety of the three-day Harlem Festival of Culture, which would have included performances across Randall’s Island.

Others nevertheless forged ahead. “Concertgoers in South Philadelphia [braved] the extreme heat for Luke Combs,” CBS Philadelphia reported, noting that “many fans were still in cowboy boots,” despite the sizzling temperatures. In East Rutherford, New Jersey, cooling tents were erected outside MetLife Stadium for Beyoncé fans who similarly refused to let the heat index compromise their outfits.

But the hottest July in recorded human history also proved the limits of stoically pushing ahead with plans during an extreme summer. Country star Jason Aldean rushed off stage mid-song during a performance in Connecticut due to heatstroke symptoms and Disturbed canceled their concert at Phoenix’s Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre at the last minute because their equipment wouldn’t turn on in the heat. In Pittsburgh, 17 attendees of an Ed Sheeran concert were hospitalized due to heat-related illness, including “one seizure and two cardiac arrest patients.”

Outdoor concerts, though, are as much a staple of American summers as BBQs and pool parties. And in an age of Ticketmaster surge pricing and variable movie theater costs, local shows in particular are an inexpensive or free way for families to enjoy entertainment outside the house — part of what makes them so popular that practically every municipality seems to have its own version. But while in past summers, hot days at least led to cool evenings in lawn chairs after the sun went down, nighttime temperatures have offered little relief this year. Already some organizers are beginning to consider moving future summer shows indoors to protect performers and audiences, though doing so will also likely make them less accessible and more expensive.

There does come a breaking point, however. Last year, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder suffered throat damage while trying to sing at a concert during Europe’s deadly heatwave, and fans have died at festivals like Tennessee’s Bonnaroo and Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival from high temperatures, especially when heat stress on the body is exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival is set to go forward beginning on Thursday, though thankfully Illinois is one of the lucky states, being only in the realm of heat “caution,” rather than heat “danger,” this week.

In Omaha, things are also looking promising for the make-up date of a “Live on the Lawn” concert that was postponed last week. The forecast for the show on Friday? Only a balmy 88 degrees.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Electric Vehicles

AM Briefing: Sean Duffy Wastes No Time

On the new Transportation secretary, California’s fires, and energy storage

Sean Duffy Targets Biden’s Fuel Economy Standards
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Storm Herminia moved over Europe, bringing severe flooding to Spain and France • The air quality is low in Mumbai, where a panel is considering banning vehicles powered by gas or diesel • It’s chilly but sunny in Washington, D.C., where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face the Senate Finance Committee in his confirmation hearings to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Judge halts Trump’s funding pause

A lot happened in Washington yesterday. Chaos erupted after the Office of Management and Budget dropped a two-page memo ordering a pause on federal grant programs that “advance[s] Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.” According to Heatmap’s Jael Holzman, the freeze targets programs including vast swathes of the federal government most relevant to the energy sector, from major Energy Department cleantech research offices and labs to all implementations of energy tax credits, including those in the Inflation Reduction Act. It also includes essentially all work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a Commerce Department subagency that produces climate science and weather forecasting. The order was set to take effect at 5 p.m. but a federal judge temporarily halted enforcement of it until a hearing on February 3.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Offshore wind question marks.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Among the many, many, many actions President Donald Trump took in his first week to curtail clean energy and climate policy in the U.S., he issued an order freezing all wind farm approvals. It’s anyone’s guess what happens next. On the one hand, we know the president hates wind energy — as he reiterated during his first post-inauguration interview on Fox News last week: “We don’t want windmills in this country.” But the posture is also at odds with Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency and vision for “energy dominance.” Plus, it’s Trump. There’s a non-zero chance he’ll change his mind.

But let’s assume the wind leasing and permitting freeze stays in place for the next four years. Trump also plans to “conduct a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending” existing leases, which could upheave projects already under construction or built. How do we make sense of what this all means for climate change?

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Podcast

The Trump Policy That Would Be Really Bad for Oil Companies

Jesse and Heatmap deputy editor Jillian Goodman talk Canadian tariffs with Rory Johnston.

Canadian oil production.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

On February 1 — that is, three days from now — President Donald Trump has promised to apply a tariff of 25% to all U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, crude oil very much not excepted. Canada has been the largest source of American crude imports for more than 20 years. More than that, the U.S. oil industry has come to depend on Canada’s thick, sulfurous oil to blend with America’s light, sweet domestic product to suit its highly specialized refineries. If that heavy, gunky stuff suddenly becomes a lot more expensive, so will U.S. oil refining.

Rory Johnston is an oil markets analyst in Toronto. He writes the Commodity Context newsletter, a data-driven look at oil markets and commodity flows. He’s also a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. He previously led commodities market research at Scotiabank. (And he’s Canadian.)

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow