More than 300 reindeer killed by freak lightning strike in Norway

On August 26, a lightning storm swept the mountain plateau of Hardangervidda in Norway, laying waste to an entire herd of migrating reindeer, some 323 animals.

Spanning some 8,000 square kilometers, Hardangervidda is the largest high mountain plateau in northern Europe and the largest national park in Norway, with a population of 10,000 to 11,000 wild reindeer.

Some experts are saying they believe this to be the largest number of animals killed by lightning ever recorded.

Lightning has apparently killed some 323 reindeer in Norway, according to the country’s Environment Directorate.

Environment Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen told the AP it’s not uncommon for reindeer or other wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes.

While details about the incident are still forthcoming, it’s suspected that the reindeer huddled together in the rain, and when the lightning hit, its energy travelled across the ground and up the animals’ legs, killing them where they stood. Hardanger has about 12,000 reindeer and hunters are allowed to shoot 2,000 a year for their meat.

“I’ve heard of groups of cow [getting killed] when it strikes the ground”, says Steve Goodman, a scientist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Satellite Service.

Normally, they are just left where they are to let nature take its course, he said.

Knutsen said the agency is now discussing what to do with the dead animals. In 1990, a thunderstorm killed 30 cattle on a farm in Orange County, Virginia, leaving their bodies scattered in a field.

When lightning hits, you’d have to be extremely unlucky to be the “primary flash channel” into which all its electricity is funnelled, but animals are often felled by a ground current, where the electricity races either towards or branches out from the flash channel.