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Lightning kills 15 head of cattle in Lithia

News Channel 8 photo by PETER MASA

Fifteen head of cattle, all humpbacked Brahmans, lay dead in an open pasture of the 160-acre Bar-S-Bar Ranch in Lithia, the apparent victims of a lightning strike.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 18, 2009

Updated: 06/18/2009 02:01 pm

LITHIA - Although lightning strikes damaged homes and trees Wednesday night in east Hillsborough County, no one was injured. No humans, that is.

A gruesome sight greeted ranch foreman Jerry Stack this morning at the Bar-S-Bar Ranch on Dorman Road.

Fifteen head of cattle, all humpbacked Brahmans, lay dead in an open pasture of the 160-acre ranch, apparent victims of a lightning strike.

There were 12 cows, two calves and one bull, Stack said. The ranch raises only Brahmans, and they are used only for breeding. Often, they are sold to ranchers to breed with other types of cattle to increase size.

Stack, whose family owned the ranch for years before selling it to Sam Samuels, said he's seen this happen over the 50 or so years he's been in the ranch business, but not to this extent.

"I've seen it many times over the years," he said this morning, "three or maybe four at a time; never this many. This is not the first time, but I've never seen this many in one strike. Practically, the whole herd is laying in a pile."

By midmorning, a backhoe was next to the cattle, digging a large hole. Stack said he was planning to bulldoze the carcasses into the hole and have them buried by the end of the day.

A few surviving calves lost mothers in the incident, he said, and they will have to be bottle fed until they are weaned.

Each cow weighed between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds, he said, and the bull probably more. He estimated the loss at about $20,000. He said the animals are not insured.

"It's not uncommon because they're outdoors," said Hugh Christian, senior lightning researcher at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Anytime you are out and a thunderstorm is nearby, you're susceptible."

Told of the incident this morning, Christian was surprised to hear that 15 head were killed.

"Direct hit," he said. "If they were all standing together, they basically all got shocked."

The cattle appeared to be in the pasture and not near any trees, which should have been a bit safer, he said. Trees act as lightning rods, and even though they offer some shelter from the rain, standing near a tree is more dangerous in a lightning storm.

"It acts as an antenna," he said.

Lightning crackled over much of Tampa and east Hillsborough on Wednesday night, not far from the Bar-S-Bar.

Hillsborough Fire Rescue units got word of 12 lightning strikes over four hours ending at 10 p.m. Five buildings were set afire, four trees were struck and a brush fire was triggered, fire officials said.

Another bolt split an oak tree on Deborah Lane in Brandon, and the tree fell onto a home. Power lines fell on an adjacent home.

No one was hurt, but the Tampa Bay chapter of the American Red Cross was busy trying to find temporary shelter for seven people.

Lightning also was blamed for two trees falling on homes on Cattail Shore Lane in Riverview.

Meteorologist Ryan Sharp with the National Weather Service in Ruskin said that between 5 and 10 p.m. Wednesday, Hillsborough recorded 1,150 lightning strikes, including the bovine-killing bolt.

The thunderstorms that sparked the lightning passed over Tampa about 6 p.m. and then over east Hillsborough between 8 and 9 p.m.

"It's not abnormal," Sharp said, "but it seems like a lot."

More storms are expected this afternoon, he said.

"We'll see another day of busy storms," he said. "We have a system from the north and temperatures in the 90s with moist air; the combination of the three means we are going to have a lot of thunderstorms."

News Channel 8 reporter Jeff Patterson contributed to this report. Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760.

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