Flights through the central regions of thunderstorms were made over New Mexico on 6 and 15 August I977 with the ONR/NMIMT Schweitzer aeroplane which carried equipment designed to measure all three components of the electric field, and the charge, Q, and diameter, d, of individual precipitation elements. On the earlier day, information was also obtained with : a rain-gaugenetworksurrounding Langmuir Laboratory; a 3 cm radar; an acoustic system for locating lightning channels; a ground-based field-change meter.The first cell on 6 August produced precipitation at the ground but no lightning. Vertical fields, E,, of up to about 50 kVm-' and precipitation charge densities pp of up to -0.5Cwere recorded within the cloud. The second cell, which grew as the first one decayed, produced 7 lightning strokes in 9 minutes during which time the radar revealed vigorous vertical growth in a narrow zone containing precipitation.Thunder reconstructions showed the acoustic sources for the first flash of this cell to be very near the top of the cloud at an altitude of 10 km a d . The subsequent flashes produced acoustic signals from progressively lower in the cloud. When the radar echo reached its maximum height lightning activity ceased. E. values of up to about SOkVm-' and pp values of down to -1 C km-3 were measured.pp was consistently negative, individual charges being less than f40pC. Q values were within the inductive limit for a thundercloud at breakdown but no systematic relation between Q and d was found.Six penetrations were made through the thundercloud of 15 August, which produced only two lightning strokes. The E, records were indicative of a (k) dipole located near the cloud top, at around -13°C. Fields of up to about lOOkVm-' and p,, values (positive and negative) of around 5Ckm-3 were measured. Q values of up to i250pC were recorded, with charges around i~50 pC being commonly found. No systematic Q-drelation was revealed, and smaller precipitation particles frequently carried charges (positive or negative) in excess of the inductive limit. On both days estimated precipitation rates were of order IOmmh-' and on most occasions the pilot reported precipitation particles to be either 'ice' or 'mixed liquid water and ice'. 1978
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