Bonnaroo organizers paused the final day of the festival on Sunday, evacuated Centeroo and shut down access points after severe weather rolled through Coffee County, Tenn., before later reopening the venue and releasing updated set times. What began as a midday storm delay became a several-hour reset of the festival’s closing night.
The disruption hit just before 2 p.m., when performances were temporarily paused because of storms in the area, and Centeroo was evacuated shortly before 2:15 p.m. as a safety measure. Attendees were told to head to the nearest exit and shelter in a vehicle, while all Sunday day parking lots, rideshare drop-off and the box office were closed by 2:29 p.m. The Manchester Police Department said all traffic inbound to Bonnaroo was stopped because of the storms and show stoppage at the venue, and the tolls were shut down until the lightning cleared.
For festivalgoers, the shutdown was not just a brief weather hold. Ragsdale Road was kept operating in both directions for local traffic when possible, but Bushy Branch Road was shut down at Ragsdale Road, making movement around the site much tighter than on a normal festival afternoon. By just before 2:45 p.m., Centeroo was still confirmed closed because of the severe weather, even as organizers worked through the rest of the day’s schedule.
At 3:31 p.m., the National Weather Service estimated the weather would pass in the next 60 to 90 minutes. Bonnaroo later said the severe weather had passed, but Centeroo remained closed for the moment, a gap that showed the festival was still handling the aftermath even after the skies began to clear. The tolls, day parking, rideshare drop-off and box office were set to reopen at 4:30 p.m., and Bonnaroo shared updated set times for the rest of Sunday shortly after 4:45 p.m.
Centeroo reopened less than 40 minutes after those updated set times were posted, ending the day’s shutdown and allowing the final night to resume under muddy conditions. Organizers had already told attendees to keep monitoring festival communications through Facebook, X, Bonnaroo Radio on 101.5 FM and app notifications, and that remained the only clear answer to the question hanging over the closing hours: which performances would be delayed, shifted or cut from the revised Sunday schedule. In a day that turned on weather, not music, the schedule itself became the story.
