Lightning strike kills more than 300 reindeer in Norway

More than 300 wild reindeer were killed by a lighting strike in central Norway, according to the Norwegian Environment Agency. 

During the weekend, the agency released startling images showing a mass of reindeer carcasses scattered across a small area on the Hardangervidda mountain plateau. 

The incident, while rare, is not without precedent in other parts of the world, where lightning bolts have killed large numbers of cattle, elk and other animals that were clustered together during a thunderstorm.

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The agency says 323 animals were killed, including 70 calves, in the lightning storm on Friday. This area is home to about 2,000 reindeer at this time of the year, the agency said.

Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen told The Associated Press it's not uncommon for reindeer or other wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes but this was an unusually deadly event.

Image: Environment Directorate / SNO

"We have not heard about such numbers before," he said Monday.

He said reindeer tend to stay very close to each other in bad weather, which could explain how so many were killed at once. 

"I don't know if there were several lighting strikes," he said. "But it happened in one moment." 

Knutsen said the agency is now discussing what to do with the dead animals.

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

Image: Environment Directorate / SNO

Thousands of reindeer migrate across the barren Hardangervidda plateau as the seasons change.

In the U.S., cattle, elk and other animals are far more likely to die from lightning than people are. 

In May of this year, lightning killed 21 cattle in South Dakota that were feeding around a metal feeding trough during a thunderstorm. In that case, lightning's current of electricity traveled through the trough, into the cattle, and also into the ground.

In the Norwegian incident, it's possible the electrical current from a single bolt, or multiple bolts, proved fatal because the animals were in contact with one another, enabling the electrical current to travel through multiple animals. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 32 people have been killed by lightning in the U.S. so far this year. 

The Associated Press contributed reporting.