MORE than 50 geese were found dead in a parking lot in Idaho, the U.S. after dying in a freak accident.

The 51 birds were migrating north when they were caught in a thunderstorm in Idaho Falls on Saturday night.

Although the geese were pummeled with pieces of hail as big as golf balls, wildlife officials believe it was actually lightning that killed the flock.

“Hail would have injured the geese,” Idaho Department of Fish and Game coordinator James Brower told Fox News.

“They’d still be alive. All of these were dead. When the officer arrived, nothing was moving or twitching.”

The officer opened up some of the geese and found that their lungs had exploded.

He also discovered that the birds were located within a 90-meter radius, further evidence that they were killed by lightning.

Everything from timing to the wind and direction of flight all contributed to the accident.

While mass die-offs in the area are not completely uncommon, Brower said they are far more often due to disease.

“Mother nature is sometimes cruel to the wildlife kingdom,” he said.

“We worry about accidents with cars and trucks — sometimes animals are affected just by the weather.”

It’s not the first time lightning has contributed to a mass die-off.

There have been three instances when a large group of cattle were killed by lightning: 30 in 1990 in Virginia, 68 in 2005 in Australia, and 52 in 2008 in Uruguay.

But the worst instance of a mass die-off from lightning was in 2016, when 323 reindeer — including 70 calves — were killed in Norway.

An entire group can be killed if they are huddled together during a thunderstorm, lightning safety expert John Jensenius told The Verge.

Jensenius explained that when groups of animals or people are killed by lightning, they tend to be killed by the ground current instead of the direct strike.

(SD-Agencies)