Last year, Cedar Falls resident Shelby Davis got to check a six-year dream off their bucket list: attending the Hinterland Music Festival.
The festival, held each year on the first weekend of August in St. Charles, is Iowa’s largest, attracting thousands of fans each year. Davis and their partner had saved up over $700 for the two of them to attend all three days. They packed up their car with camping gear and arrived to the grounds with thousands of other attendees, excited to see popular artists like Hozier, Lizzy McAlpine, Flipturn and Chappell Roan.
But as the weekend kicked off, Davis' excitement quickly melted.
They understood the mantra: “It’s August in Iowa — it's going to be hot.” But as the heat index climbed to around 100 degrees, they said it created an increasingly dangerous situation for them. They described limited access in and out of the grounds, dense crowds with little shade and long lines for scattered water stations to fill water bottles that had to be emptied ahead of entry.
“I witnessed a lot of people passing out in the water lines,” they recalled. “I had several friends that passed out in the pit area throughout the day. There were just a lot of health and safety concerns.”
On Friday evening, as the first day of the festival was winding down, hundreds of Hinterlanders flooded the festival’s social pages with similar concerns. At 2 a.m. Saturday, Davis made the difficult, tearful decision to leave two days early.
“There were a lot of people who, of course, said, ‘Oh, well, it was your first big festival weekend. You were underprepared,’ and I fully admit that could very well be part of the case,” Davis said. “But, I will say, I had an expectation going into it that because the festival has such a big name, and has, at the time, a really well-respected reputation, I felt that we as the festival-goers would be taken care of, and our safety and our comfort would be the top priority."
The next day, Hinterland lifted its ban on bringing in outside water as temperatures grew well into the 90s. A few months later, Hinterland Festival Director Sam Summers spoke directly to fans and heard their concerns via a Reddit AMA, and promised changes.
When announcing the 2025 lineup — featuring major artists like Tyler, the Creator, Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey — the festival also unveiled a new climate-conscious policy: the 90 Degree Guarantee.
A new kind of refund policy
Inspired by product return guarantees and hospitality cancellation policies, the 90 Degree Guarantee allows ticket-holders to request a refund for specific festival days if the National Weather Service predicts temperatures of 90 degrees or higher for the 50240 zip code on July 29.
"We want to make sure that the folks that are on-site are the ones that want to be on-site, and not there because they paid $300 to $400 for a ticket, and they're going to go either way."Sam Summers, Hinterland festival director and producer
Summers said the policy is meant to give fans more control when it comes to making informed decisions for their safety and well-being.
"We want to make sure that the folks that are on-site are the ones that want to be on-site, and not there because they paid $300 to $400 for a ticket and they're going to go either way," he said. "I think it's helpful for the customer to have that decision.”
Summers said climate change has become an increasingly worrying problem for the festival, with climate records being broken more frequently. Hinterland's new climate awareness commitment references how the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past decade. He said the temperature in the pit during Zach Bryan's 2023 performance reached 120 degrees.
“The last few years, with the heat, there’s always been at least one day that’s just been unbearable," he said. "Yes, it's hot in the summer in Iowa. It's humid. But when every single year was above what it was supposed to be — I think we were clocking 97, 98 [degrees] last year, no breeze — for a festival where we expect folks to be out there all day long, we need to be mindful of how we're taking care of that guest and making sure that that guest has what they need.”
Climate change is playing a bigger role at outdoor festivals
While late summer heat is a given in the Midwest, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe at outdoor festivals across the country. The Ultra EDM Music Festival in Miami has faced flooding for two years in a row. Inside Climate News reported that almost 100 people at a concert for musician Louis Tomlinson were injured in a hailstorm in Colorado in May 2023. A few months later, more than a dozen people at the Ed Sheeran concert in Pittsburgh were taken to the hospital, several for heat-related illnesses.
And as the years pass, Iowa — and its Hinterland Music Festival — is only going to get hotter.
Peter Thorne, an expert on the impact of climate change on health at the University of Iowa, says that Iowa has historically experienced about 23 days a year above 90 degrees. That number is expected to triple by mid-century.
“Heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense,” he said.
While Thorne agreed that the 90 Degree Guarantee is a good step that thinks proactively about climate change and its repercussions for human health, he added that “temperature alone doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s dangerous to people.”
“Heat index is a better indicator of risk to human health than temperature itself,” he said. “There's a huge difference in terms of the impact of the temperature depending upon the relative humidity. So, if [Hinterland] were able to combine the two, or just use heat index, that would probably be a better indication of the risk to human health."
However, he noted that even the heat index is flawed when it comes to Hinterland's specific circumstances, as it assumes people are in the shade.
More eyes on Hinterland
Hinterland is increasingly drawing more national attention. Summers said 2024 was the festival's biggest year yet, with 70% of attendees traveling to Iowa from out-of-state, which Summers partially attributed to the lineup going viral on TikTok.
To meet growing demand and more fully address last year's frustrations, organizers are expanding the grounds, adding more shaded areas and more water stations, installing misting fans and providing more entrances and exits to the festival.
“We’ve got to make sure that folks that are visiting us from all 50 states — and other countries — their experience with us was a good one," Summers said.
As for the 90 Degree Guarantee, Summers is confident the new policy will work by reminding ticket-holders of the importance of preparing accordingly for the temperatures in order to see the artists they love.
“I know how this is going to go," he said. "I'm confident that there's going to be folks that take advantage of it — not in a bad way — but like, they use it. It's going to be sort of a reminder to folks, like, ‘I still want to go, I still love these bands, but I'm going to maybe wear loose fit clothing or make sure I take a cooling towel or a water bottle.'"
He also noted that people in the music industry are interested in seeing how it works in its first year.
“I think folks in the industry are very curious about it — they want to see how it goes. But so far, it's been very favorable with our fans," he said. “You may be dealing with hotter weather, but we're all trying to keep our fans hydrated, healthy and safe, and so anything that makes that experience better for the fans, other festivals are going to adopt. So I'm happy to be the guinea pig here, but I'm very confident that it plays out how we expect it to.”
For Davis, learning about the 90 Degree Guarantee was a pleasant surprise.
"That was the first policy that they implemented this year that really, at least for me, made me feel like, 'OK, maybe they are really trying to address the problem this year,'" they said.
But they said it will be a few years before they're ready to return to the festival.
"It would take being able to see the implementation, and see that it's going to be consistent for me to feel comfortable giving it another chance," Davis said.
The Hinterland Music Festival is a sponsor of Iowa Public Radio.
