Nine People Struck By Lightning In Wellington At Grant Family Farms

The storms rolling across Larimer County this afternoon are packing quite a wallop. We're hearing reports of flooding, road closures and mudslides in Rist Canyon and in the High Park burn area, a flash flood warning for central Larimer County until 6PM, as well as scary news of ten people getting struck by lightning in Wellington. (Reports are now saying nine people were hit, not ten.)

According to CBS Denver,

Nine farm workers were struck by lightning north of Wellington on Thursday afternoon.

The Wellington Fire Chief said the workers were in the Grant Farms area.

At least two of the workers were rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

You can see more coverage of the story in the CBS News video below.

The Denver Post is now reportingthat it was eight farm workers that were struck by lightning at the farm, while a 65-year-old woman was struck by lightning on the Ute Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park  around 12:30PM in a separate incident.

The farm workers were hit around 3:30 this afternoon near West County Road 72 and North County Road 17. Hopefully everyone is okay and can make full recoveries.

Meteorologist Mike Nelson tweeted that we're seeing about 6,000 lightning strikes per hour with the storms rolling across the state.

That's a lot of lightning. Be safe out there.

Elsewhere in Fort Collins, fire crews had to put out a couple small fires that were started when lightning struck a large tree behind a duplex on East Plum Street.