Figure 1. A pattern of the progress of the storm on Aragats on 23 May. a) The distance to the cloud base. b) Images of the graupel fall. c) Disturbances of the NS electric field (blue), count rate of ASNT spectrometer (black), and distance to lightning (red).
During the second storm that occurred the next day on May 24 and lasted for 3 hours, the electrification of the atmosphere above the station was much smaller. The nearby lightning flashes occurred only during the first hour of the storm terminating a small TGE at the end of its development. During the large TGE followed 6 minutes later, the nearest lightning flash was at a distance of more than 15 km, consequently, it did not disturb smooth evolution of long duration (≈12 minutes) intense TGE (see Table 1 for more detail). The cloud base height was smaller than on 22 May, the graupel fall was moderate.