{"id":2461428,"date":"2016-08-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/how-did-lightning-strike-kill-323-reindeer\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:21:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T18:21:16","slug":"how-did-lightning-strike-kill-323-reindeer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/how-did-lightning-strike-kill-323-reindeer\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did a Lightning Strike Kill 323 Reindeer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When physics professor Joseph Dwyer heard that 323 reindeer, ranging across a plateau in southern Norway last Friday,\u00a0had been killed instantly by lightning\u2014their bodies splayed out in clusters on the ground like groves of felled trees\u2014he was stunned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for cattle or horses to be killed in large numbers [by lightning], but I\u2019ve never seen anything close to that,\u201d said Dwyer, who teaches at the University of New Hampshire and is one of the world\u2019s leading lightning\u00a0experts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An employee with the Norwegian Environment Agency<\/a> discovered the carcasses after a vicious thunderstorm pummeled the Hardangervidda plateau. Seventy calves were included among the dead. In photos released by the agency, the animals are visible in piles up to 100 yards apart. \u201cThey were standing on a hill, moving up that hill,\u201d Olav Strand, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, told the New York Times<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThey seem to have fallen dead on the ground, exactly where they stood.\u201d<\/p>\n

With no comparable mass-death-by-lightning-strike on record, the question is how so many animals could have been killed at once.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

With no comparable mass-death-by-lightning-strike on record, the question is how so many animals could have been killed at once. Dwyer said in a phone interview Monday that it is possible the animals were dropped by a single ground strike, though it's impossible to know for sure. \u201cIt depends upon how much current was flowing during the strike,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/span> (Norwegian Environment Agency)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The strike\u2019s deadly range\u2014whether it could have killed animals standing 100 yards apart\u2014also depends on how conductive the soil was. The more conductive the soil, the quicker the current disperses when it hits the ground, and the less dangerous for animals or people standing on the ground.\u00a0A\u00a0less conductive soil, which is typical in drier areas like southern Norway, allows\u00a0large voltages to build up across the ground, which are then\u00a0left searching for somewhere to go. That, in turn, can lead to \u201cstep voltages,\u201d which involve an electric current traveling overland and impacting any person or object connected to the ground. It's\u00a0common for lightning-strike victims to be injured or killed by step voltages. Usually the current enters a body through one leg and exits through the other\u2014well below a person\u2019s heart and lungs. But for a four-legged animal whose heart is located between its front\u00a0and hind legs, the voltage often passes through its heart before exiting.*<\/p>\n

\u201cSo an animal like a reindeer could be more easily killed,\u201d said Dwyer, who believes step voltages were the likely mechanism for last week\u2019s event. \u201cIf you had the right conductivity and a very big lightning flash, it seems plausible that you could get a large number of animals killed like this, assuming they were all huddled close together.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the fact that reindeer have no safe place to retreat during an electrical storm can turn an entire herd into a target, Dwyer said. \u201cThis event really shows how dangerous lightning is. People have a choice, but reindeer have to stay outside, and there\u2019s really no safe place outside during a thunderstorm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scary phenomenon called \u201cstep voltages,\u201d in which an electric current travels overland and impacts any person or object connected to the ground, is likely responsible for wiping out 323 reindeer huddled close together during a thunderstorm last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23631,"featured_media":2109711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"a784306bf0ac4caaa15496a2db123763","footnotes":""},"categories":[2547],"tags":[2624,3137,2601],"byline":[70],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2461428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-nature","tag-norway","tag-science","byline-devon-oneil"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"How Did a Lightning Strike Kill 323 Reindeer?","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/how-did-lightning-strike-kill-323-reindeer\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/how-did-lightning-strike-kill-323-reindeer\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/29\/reindeer-lightning-norway_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/29\/reindeer-lightning-norway_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Environment","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"mmirhashem"}],"creator":["mmirhashem"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["nature","norway","science"],"dateCreated":"2016-08-29T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2016-08-29T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T18:21:16Z"},"rendered":"