The Single Bolt of Lightning that Killed 835 Sheep

In 1939, 835 sheep were killed during  a thunderstorm in Pine Canyon, Utah.

That’s obviously super sad. But it’s even worse when you realize I don’t mean a bunch of thunderstorms  spread across all of 1939. I mean in a single moment  of a single thunderstorm.

835 sheep were killed by a  single bolt of lightning.

It’s safe to say this wasn’t an act of Zeus, Thor, or Cidolfus Telamon, but  what really happened here?

It turns out, a classic bolt  from the heavens is far from the only way you can get struck by lightning.

And as those sheep learned, some of the  ways can also be far more dangerous.

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Before we get into the story of the sheep,  let’s talk about what lightning even is.

Earth’s air normally acts  as an electrical insulator.

In other words, electrical charge  has a hard time moving through it.

So over time, due to little bits  of things constantly moving around, you’ll eventually get a  difference in charge built up between the bottoms of clouds and the ground.

Like, a patch of cloud gets super negative, and the ground below it, by  comparison, is super positive.

Once too much difference builds up, the atmosphere finds a way to  discharge it all and reset the system.

As you might suspect, the way it does  that results in a lightning bolt.

But the lightning bolt you  see isn’t the whole thing.

Before the visible bolt strikes, it’s  preceded by a bunch of invisible trails of ionized air called leaders  that start up in the clouds, and quickly creep downward on the hunt  for the best path to take to the ground.

Meanwhile, trails of air with the  opposite charge, called streamers, travel upward from the ground…and  objects just chilling out on the ground.