  We investigate the presence of extra relativistic degrees of freedom in the
early Universe, contributing to the effective number of neutrinos
$N_\text{eff}$, as $\Delta N_\text{eff}\equiv N_\text{eff}-3.044\geq 0$, in
light of the recent measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) by the
DESI collaboration. We analyze one-parameter extensions of the $\Lambda$CDM
model where dark radiation (DR) is free streaming or behaves as a perfect
fluid, due to self-interactions. We report a significant relaxation of upper
bounds on $\Delta N_\text{eff}$, with respect to previous BAO data from
SDSS+6dFGS, when additionally employing Planck data (and supernovae data from
Pantheon+), setting $\Delta N_\text{eff}\leq 0.39$ ($95\%$ C.L.) for free
streaming DR, and a very mild preference for fluid DR, $\Delta N_\text{eff} =
0.221^{+0.088}_{-0.18}$ ($\leq 0.46$, $95\%$ C.L.). Applying constraints from
primordial element abundances leads to slightly tighter constraints on $\Delta
N_\text{eff}$, but they are avoided if DR is produced after Big Bang
Nucleosynthesis (BBN). For fluid DR we estimate the tension with the SH$_0$ES
determination of $H_0$ to be less than $3\sigma$ and as low as $2\sigma$, and
for free-streaming DR the tension is below $3\sigma$ if production occurs after
BBN. This lesser degree of tension motivates a combination with SH$_0$ES in
these cases, resulting in a $4.4\sigma-5\sigma$ evidence for dark radiation
with $\Delta N_\text{eff}\simeq 0.6$ and large improvements in $\chi^2$ over
$\Lambda$CDM, $-18\lesssim \Delta \chi^2\lesssim -25$.
