Lightning that struck a wind turbine tower Wednesday near U.S. Highway 87 between Sterling City and Big Spring sent four men to a nearby hospital, a General Electric Co. official said.

The four employees drove themselves to the hospital and were checked out as a precaution, GE spokeswoman Melissa Rocker said.

Granite Services GE Wind, the group that employed the crew, did not release the names of the workers.

"No one was injured seriously," she said. "Everyone went there on their own to be checked out."

A monitoring site based out of Sweetwater keeps track of storms at all times, Rocker said, and notifies a site leader when there is a thunderstorm warning. Wednesday afternoon, the storm arrived "out of nowhere," she said.

The crew was coming out of the tower when the lightning struck about 4:30 p.m., Rocker said.

Joel Dunn, meteorologist intern at the National Weather Service in San Angelo, said lightning storms can "pop up really quickly." Based on Wednesday afternoon's radar, the lighting storm that formed by the wind tower site was one of those cases.

"Within 10 minutes they had a moderate rainfall going," he said.

The crew was coming out of the tower when the lightning struck about 4:30 p.m., Rocker said.