Sounding rockets launched by Mike Kelley and his group at Cornell  
demonstrated the existence of transient (1 ms) parallel electric fields  
associated with lightning strikes at high altitudes above active  
thunderstorms.  These electric fields were thought to be strong enough  
to energize electrons and generate strong turbulence as the beams  
thermalized.  The parallel electric fields were observed on multiple  
flights, but high time resolution measurements were not made within 100  
km horizontal distance of lightning strokes, where the electric fields  
are largest.


	In 2000 the "Lightning Bolt" sounding rocket was launched directly  
over an active thunderstorm to an apogee over 300 km.  The sounding  
rocket was equipped with sensitive electric and magnetic field  
instruments as well as a photometer and electrostatic analyser for  
measuring accelerated electrons.  The electric and magnetic fields were  
sampled at 10 million samples per second, letting us fully resolve the  
structure of the parallel electric field pulse up to and beyond the  
plasma frequency.

	In this talk I will present results from the Lightning Bolt mission,  
concentrating on the parallel electric field pulses that arrive before  
the lower-frequency whistler wave modes.  We observe pulses with peak  
electric fields of a few mV/m lasting for a substantial fraction of a  
millisecond.  Superimposed on this is high-frequency turbulence,  
comparable in amplitude to the pulse itself.  This is the first direct  
observation of this structure in the parallel electric field, within  
100 km horizontal distance of the lightning stroke.

	I will also present evidence that these parallel electric fields are  
limited quite strongly in both horizontal distance and altitude from  
the lightning stroke, with occurrence frequencies that drop off rapidly  
beyond 200 km horizontal distance
above 200 km altitude.  They also fall off rapidly with altitude,  I  
will discuss these results in terms of the effects of the parallel  
electric field in energizing electrons as well as an estimate of how  
much energy these parallel fields can dump into the F region  
ionosphere.