The agency released images of the animal carcasses laying out on the plateau.
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A freak lightning storm has killed 323 reindeer in a remote mountainous area of Norway, officials said on Monday. “We don’t know if it was one or more lighting strikes”, a spokesman for the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate told Norwegian news agency NTB.
Knutsen noted that that during bad weather, reindeer stay very close together, which could be one plausible explanation for so many killed at once.
Some 323 dead wild reindeers struck by lightning are seen littering a hill side on Hardangervidda mountain plateau in central Norway, on August 27, 2016. Reindeer are pack animals and are often close together.
The dead reindeer were scattered over an area of around 50 m.
So yep, with the insane amount of rain seeping into the already fast-thawing ground, those lightning rod legs, and that steadfast pack mentality, these poor reindeer had a whole lot going against them that day. Thousands of reindeer migrate across the barren Hardanangervidda tableland as the seasons change.
It said 68 cows were killed in 2005 in a strike on a dairy farm in Australia, according to Guinness World Records.
Much of the plateau is protected as part of Hardangervidda National Park, which is home to approximately 10,000 reindeer, making it Norway’s largest wild reindeer range.
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Cattle, deer, elephants rhinos and giraffes have all been reported killed by lightning, though not in massive number like the reindeer and sheep.
