{"id":27456,"date":"2024-05-27T20:04:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T02:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lightning-strike-kills-colorado-rancher-and-34-head-of-cattle\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:01:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:01:53","slug":"lightning-strike-kills-colorado-rancher-and-34-head-of-cattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lightning-strike-kills-colorado-rancher-and-34-head-of-cattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning strike kills Colorado rancher and 34 head of cattle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=4163fc0d-a188-4ecb-a007-4e3704ed2931&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1542\" height=\"1097\" alt=\"A thunderstorm sparks lightning strikes in 2013 from Animas Mountain to Missionary Ridge. Because of improved weather forecasting, fewer Americans lose their lives to lightning strikes. In 1940, Americans stood a 1 in 400,000 chance of dying by lightning strike. Today, it\u2019s 1 in 11 million.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A thunderstorm sparks lightning strikes in 2013 from Animas Mountain to Missionary Ridge. Because of improved weather forecasting, fewer Americans lose their lives to lightning strikes. In 1940, Americans stood a 1 in 400,000 chance of dying by lightning strike. Today, it\u2019s 1 in 11 million.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of Dan Bender<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>DENVER \u2013 A lightning strike killed a Colorado rancher and 34 head of cattle over the weekend, officials said Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Morgan, 51, was feeding his cattle from a trailer when he was struck and died on the scene despite lifesaving efforts, the Jackson County Sheriff\u2019s Office said.<\/p>\n<p>The lightning bolt struck on wide-open pasture outside the town of Rand, about 80 miles northwest of Denver, said George Crocket, the county coroner.<\/p>\n<p>The strike also bowled over around 100 head of cattle that had bunched around the trailer loaded with hay, said Crocket. \u201cAll but the 34 got up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Morgan\u2019s father-in-law and wife were nearby but survived the blast, said Crocket.<\/p>\n<p>The incident stunned the small, tightknit community where most everybody knows everybody, Crockett said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Incident stunned small, tightknit community where most everybody knows everybody<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-27456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80062,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27456\/revisions\/80062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27456"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=27456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}