A dust storm forced some participants to leave the Burning Man festival in Nevada before its usual highlight on Saturday night, authorities said, according to The Associated Press.

The dust storm on the Black Rock Desert, approximately 110 miles north of Reno, started on Saturday afternoon and continued into the evening, Roger Farschon, incident commander for the federal Bureau of Land Management, told the AP.

The festival was in a “total whiteout,” he wrote in an e-mail. “A similar cold front caused a major dust event on Monday. The rest of the event has been relatively dust-free.”

The celebration held once a year, described by many participants as an experiment of radical self-expression and radical self-reliance, was due to climax on Saturday night with the setting alight of its 40-foot signature wooden effigy.

The number of people who came to attend the event reached a record 49,599, registering a remarkable boost from last year’s 47,097, according to officials.

Roger Farschon said no major problems were reported, although the U.S. Bureau of Land Management made 11 arrests and issued 175 citations to participants, mainly for drug violations.

“Overall, the event is going smoothly with no major problems,” Mr. Farschon wrote, as reported by the AP. “Medical cases are very consistent with last year with daily patient loads of 0.5 to 0.7 percent of the population.”

The annual festival began as a bonfire ritual in 1986 at San Francisco’s Baker Beach and was moved in 1990 to its current location.

Initially, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, two of the fest’s originators, built an 8-foot wooden effigy, which was much smaller and simpler than the figure used in the present ritual.