Weve heard about animals being struck by lightning and killed, but I dont remember hearing about lightning killing animals on this scale before. “It depends upon how much current was flowing during the strike”, he said.
Advertisement
Knutsen said the agency is now discussing what to do with the dead animals.
When Knut Nylend, an official from the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate (Statens naturoppsyn NNI) went out on a routine inspection near Hardangervidda National Park on Friday, he wasnt expecting to see hundreds of dead reindeer lying across a field. Because reindeer huddle together during storms, the animals were found contained in an area just 50 to 80 metres (164 to 262 feet). Lightning appeared to have killed an entire herd: 323 reindeer at last count.
It’s not the first time a large herd of animals have been killed by lightning.
Hardanger was extremely wet on Friday, helping conduct lightning. Although it is not certain how the reindeer died, the Inspectorate believes that an unusually high electrical discharge interacted with the storm’s highly conductive torrential rain and electrocuted them.
But if you’re looking for a silver lining in this grisly event, there is one. kinda.
There’s now an ongoing investigation into how bad the spread of this disease in the local reindeer population is, and Knutsen said the corpses of the lightning victims will provide a considerable sample for analysis.
Advertisement
Most lightning deaths that occur in groups are due to the ground current, John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Verge.
