Sprites in the night of 11/12 August

Among the last days of thunderstorm activity over France (8-12 Aug) the night of 11/12 August was a success in observing sprites. The observation conditions at Pic du Midi were not very favourable because of high humidity, but Puy de Dôme was better this time. From Thursday evening to late night hours two thunderstorm systems over the south-east of France and northern Italy remained active. They produced lots of electric discharges, and at least some of them apparently produced sprites. The system of Puy de Dôme recorded two carrot sprites. The first was captured at about 22:44:16 UT (11 Aug):

The second event was captured 16 min later at about 23:02:21 UT:



with longer lasting luminous cores:

The maps of the cloud-to-ground discharges detected by Meteorage during a 5-min period when the sprites happened show many smaller positive and negative discharges. None of them, however, is close to the occurrence of these sprites:




At 23:12:39 UT a third sprite was detected: