【Uschi Karnat】

It's that time of year again when your Instagram feed is Uschi Karnatfilled with dreamlike desert images that make you yearn to be at Burning Man. So much FOMO.

But then there are those other images that emerge when the "city in the desert" of roughly 70,000 people ceases to exist. The mass exodus from Black Rock City, Nevada, brought so much traffic this weekend that it would make one pining for a Utopian getaway next year think twice.

This aerial photo is case in point. It perfectly captures the festival gridlock and may make you cringe:

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Traffic out of the Playa, as Burning Man's temporary desert home is called, is known to be horrendous time and again. There's even a Twitter account, @bmantraffic, dedicated to traffic updates.

But this year, there was an added element of woe. The bearer-of-bad-news Twitter account described the gridlock as "extreme" and at one point reported the wait time out of Burning Man's gates as nine hours.

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A 17-year-old had gone missing -- she was later found in the temporary city -- and authorities delayed the exodus Sunday as they searched, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Some people missed their flights, according to social media, while others fell asleep behind the wheel as they waited for traffic to clear, the Gazette-Journal reports. Some even took the spirit of Burning Man with them and danced atop RVs to cure their bumper-to-bumper blues.

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But the traffic didn't stop Sunday after the missing teen was found. "Prime time" traffic kicked up on Monday, with festival officials encouraging people to stay another day. Burning Man ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 5 this year.

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