November 27 2007 chase

Summary:

A coworker swapped shifts with me so that he could watch football and I could try and chase this incredible setup.  The problem was, I still had to work until 2pm.  I strongly favored the cold core target south of Topeka, but as I watched things evolve I wasn't sure I could make it in time given the large batch of strong elevated storms I'd have to drive through west of Kansas City.  I literally waited until walking out the door to decide to play the arc of fastmoving storms farther southeast.  Thereafter, three (correct) critical choices in navigation resulted in me reaching the Erie, KS tornadic supercell in time.  I intercepted the storm 5-10 minutes before it tornado'd... and given my experience on November 12, I left plenty of room between myself and the 65mph-moving storm.  Soon after producing the tornado, the storm shriveled and was blown apart by the extreme environmental windfields.

Photos (356-405pm CST):

representative hodograph via Neodesha profiler

storm motion: 210 deg @ 56 kts

0-1 km SRH: 241 m2/s2

0-3 km SRH: 229 m2/s2

0-1 km bulk shear: 37 kts

0-6 km bulk shear: 80 kts

7-10 km SR flow: 46 kts