In February and March 1978 two rockets were launched from Poker Flat, Alaska. Each rocket carried both an upleg and a downleg trimethyl aluminium (TMA) chemical trail release as well as three barium cannisters. The TMA trails provided neutral wind measurements between 80 and 180 km. The horizontal separation between the two trails was approximately 250 km so that the meridional gradient in the neutral winds could also be measured. The barium realeases occured at 200 km and 280 km near apogee. Strontium impurities in the barium provided measurements of the neutral winds at these heights, and the barium drifts provided electric field measurements. The Chatanika radar was operated prior to and during the rocket flights on both days, giving plasma densities and electric fields. On both launch dates the geomagnetic activity was high, with Kp values ranging from 3 to 5. On the first day, February 28, the launch at 0420 UT was preceded by a substorm at 0.240-0330 UT, the magnetic signature of which was present over a broad local time interval. On the second day, March 2, a substorm also occurred but at a later universal time (0340). This substorm was confined to local midnight in the magnetograms. The wind measurements on both days showed very similar vertical profiles with the winds at the lower altitidues in the direction of the E¿B drift, turning northward with increasing altitude. The westward neutral winds were in the direction opposite to that expected if the driving force was the solar heating pressure gradient. Thus the Lorentz force and Joule heating must have had a strong influence on the observed neutral winds. However, the differing geophysical conditions on the two days indicate that the neutral flow cannot be explained completely by the local magnetic activity. This is explored further in a companion paper, wherein a two dimensional numerical model is applied to the observations. The barium cloud drifts on both days showed intense poleward electric fields in the subauroral region. The drifts were nearly independent of latitude and were equivalent to electric fields of 60 mV/m on February 28 and 40 mV/m on March 2.