The notion that a magnetic cloud may consist not of one but of a few closely interacting magnetic tubes came from the analysis of the relation between the electron temperature Teand plasma density Ne(Fainberg et al. 1996). The log‐log plot of Teversus Neof data in the 10–13 June 1993 Ulysses magnetic cloud revealed two polytropes (both with &ggr;e< 1) which have been attributed by Osherovich, Fainberg and Stone (1999a) to two helices embedded in the same cylindrical flux rope. In contrast to configurations with cylindrical symmetry, magnetic configurations with helical symmetry allow a description of many helices which in cross section look like distorted flux ropes. We present elements of the magnetic and thermodynamic structure of the Oct 18–21, 1995 magnetic cloud observed by Wind. Our research is complementary to previous studies of this cloud by other authors (Larson et al. 1997; Lepping et al. 1997; Janoo et al. 1998). The log‐log plots of Tevs Nesuggest that this cloud consists of eight magnetic tubes with polytropic indices below unity and a few non‐coherent structures for which the polytropic relation is not valid. The solar wind quasi‐invariant (Osherovich et al., 1999b) for this cloud strongly anti‐correlates with the Dst index for the resulting magnetic storm. © 2003 American Institute of Physics