There’s no mistaking what killed four longhorns at a Mountain View County feedlot last week, says a slightly surprised cattleman.
Beside an old Harmattan-area granary now sporting a splintered, busted-apart wood opening, Damian Moore found two dead calves and two dead cows on the evening of July 30.
“You always think it’s going to be sickness, but no, it was lightning,” said the 26-year-old.
Environment Canada issued its first severe thunderstorm alert of the day for parts of Mountain View County at about 3:24 that Monday.
It would be one of many weather alerts -- warnings and watches – the federal agency issued for the region stretching into the double-digit hours of the evening.
At first, meteorologists were tracking a single severe thunderstorm 30 kilometres northwest of Sundre which was moving to the southeast at 25 kilometres an hour (km/h).
A little over an hour later “a cluster” was being tracked 50 kilometres southwest of Rocky Mountain House moving to the southeast at 30 km/h.
Lightning strikes around the supper hour cut power to about 1,280 customers in Sundre and area and an undeclared number in Olds and area, Fortis reported.
Hail was reported in Carstairs and later in the evening, a lightning strike was blamed for a fire that levelled a vintage barn southeast of the intersection of highways 2 and 27, southeast of Olds
Around 8 p.m. or so, Moore could hear “booming thunder” and saw what seemed like “lightning strikes every minute” on the way from Eagle Hill to his Harmattan-area home, located between Sundre and Olds.
He made sure to drive past his parents' place -- Moore’s Feedlot on Twp. Rd. 324 between Rge. Rd. 34 and 35 -- to see how his herd was doing in the storm.
“I’ve had some fence jumpers so you never know,” he said.
The herd was pasturing in an area right alongside Twp. Rd. 324. Moore knew something was wrong as soon as he saw downed cattle. Some looked like they had fallen over from a standing position, others as if they were killed while bedding down.
“They must have been looking for shelter around the granary when lightning hit,” he said.
Moore’s father Grant was on the porch that evening when he saw, and heard, a huge lightning bolt strike to the east of the feedlot.
With no visible strike on the roof, Moore and his father surmise the two steel cables stretching the width of the granary’s interior to keep the walls up were conductors in the lightning strike.
The cattle must have taken the ground current, said Moore. A cursory look at the otherwise healthy animals revealed no outward signs of a strike, like singeing or black spots, he said, adding it was pretty evident what happened.
Wooden pieces of the granary were strewn metres from the opening, which appeared “blasted out.”
The event was tragic, said Moore, as it left two calves young enough to still require their mother’s milk orphaned, while two other cows lost their calves.
Moore immediately went to work pairing the orphaned calves with the two cows, using a “smell technique” intended to trick or confuse the cows into taking the non-biological calves as their own.
One way is to skin the dead calf and put some of the hide on the substitute, said Moore.
Days after the incident the five-month-old brown orphaned bull calf, sporting the black hide of one of the dead calves, seemed to be making headway with his adopted mother.
Equally as tragic, said Moore, was that a pet bull calf died.
Kevin, or Double Chocolate as he was also known, froze his ears when born during a March cold snap, endearing him to the family.
It wasn’t the first time the Moore family had lost cattle to lightning. Moore’s father said he lost a couple of cattle years ago that were pasturing north of Sundre. They were sheltering under a “big ol’ spruce tree” that got hit, he said.
Moore’s mother Kim said she was questioning the expense of outfitting many of the feedlot’s buildings with lightning rods – conductors intended to divert lightning away from buildings and into the ground.
“Something like this makes me think we made the right choice,” she said.
According to Environment Canada, the average number of lightning flashes per year in Canada is 2.2638 million. July is the month that has the most lightning strikes, according to the federal department, followed by August and June. A bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of up to 220,000 km/h and reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C.
Based on an analysis of media reports, vital statistics, hospital admission and emergency room records, and fire loss data, Environment Canada estimates that each year on average in Canada, there are between nine and 10 lightning-related deaths and up to 164 lightning-related injuries.
The majority of lightning-related fatalities and injuries in Canada occur in Ontario. Over 90 per cent of lightning deaths reported in vital statistics since 1921 have occurred in Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba, the federal agency says.
Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips compiled a Canadian Weather Trivia Calendar that lists dozens of lightning strike incidents including one in Pigeon Lake, Alta. that ended in tragedy.
On June 16, 2007, “a group of seven took refuge under some poplars, but a lightning bolt arced down and hit the trees, ripping bark off in long strips and causing smoke to rise from the branches, leaving six of them unconscious and one dead. Adding to the tragedy, the victim’s pregnant wife miscarried. This area is one of the most lightning prone in Canada.”
