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Bonnaroo is a large outdoor music and arts festival held every June in Manchester, Tennessee, and has been running since 2002, drawing tens of thousands of fans to a rural farm site for multiple days of performances. In recent years the event has repeatedly been disrupted by extreme weather, including cancellations tied to heavy rain and flooding, which has put growing strain on the grounds and infrastructure that host it.

The people behind these decisions are the festival's organisers, who run the site and book its line-ups; they are the ones who invest in upgrades such as drainage and roadways to keep the festival viable each summer. Despite recent spending on improvements, the site has continued to suffer damage from consecutive storm seasons, raising questions about how sustainable the current schedule is without a break for recovery.

This matters because Bonnaroo is one of the most prominent annual music festivals in the United States, with significant economic and cultural importance for the local area and the wider festival circuit. Its repeated weather-related setbacks also reflect a broader challenge facing outdoor events, as organisers weigh the costs of maintaining sites against increasingly unpredictable and severe weather.