Wednesday forecast does not breed a lot of confidence that “World of Speed” will take place next month.
With a little more than a week before final decision to either hold the event or cancel it the ten day forecast is predicting cloudy skies with chances of thundershowers.
Also known as micro burst the highly localized thunderstorms if one or more hit the salt flats in the coming week race organizers my have no choice but to pull the plug on the “World of Speed”.
Already last week the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association warned racers that while the group was optimistic that “wpr;d of Speed” would take off it was an extremely cautious optimism.
For the first time in 20 years bad weather caused the cancellation of the Salt Flat’s premier racing event Speed Week two years in a row.
A little under 200 cars are expected to race in World of Speed a much smaller number than the 700 Speed Week draws.
According to the SCTA web page the amount of water dumped on the famous race was simply was too much to drain or evaporate before the start of the event.
The last time rain caused the cancellation of Speed Week was in 1994 but according to what few records were kept and the memory of old time Nevadans this year’s cancellation could be harbinger of several more in the coming decade.
Already unusually late spring storms drenched northern Nevada for almost two weeks this May supporting ranchers claims that rural Nevada is headed toward a wet cycle.
Those heavy rains both last year and this past spring caused a layer of mud to flow down from the surrounding mountains onto the salt flats, covering roughly 6 miles of the area usually converted into a race course.
“It’s disappointing but it is not the end of the world,” said Wendover Mayor Mike Crawford. “Some local businesses will take a hit but I would not say any will shut down because of the cancellation. Anyone who has lived here more than 25 years knows that there are good years and bad ones for Speed Week of any other events on the Salt Flats. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s they were talking about canceling Speed Week forever because we had several wet years in a row. Then we had 25 dry years. I guess people got spoiled but there is no reason to panic.”
The cancellation of Speed Week in 2014 was blamed for a 10 percent drop in total gaming win July 2014, Gaming numbers for July 2015 are expected to be released next week.
The back to back cancellations of Speed Week and perhaps the World of Speed has given new life to the “SOS” or “Save the Salt” movement.
Begun after multiple cancellations of racing in the late 80’s and early 90’s SOS pitted racers against the mine operations on the salt flats. A deal was struck in the mid-1990’s where the mining companies agreed to dump waste brine back on the slat flats and for 25 years friction between the two groups was kept to a minimum. That animosity could return. While racers point the blame at the miners, miners return the favor and while not as flashy as million dollar race cars they do have a point.
In the 25 years of excellent racing conditions Speed Week has grown from a couple of hundred race cars to about 700 vehicles and if no cancellation had taken place this year and last the number could well have exceeded 1,000. The wear and tear of that many vehicles and crews on the very limited area of the salt flats by so many machines and men could have contributed the deterioration of natural resource.
A future compromise could include future restrictions on mining and also limit the number of racers.