Tropical Storm Cristobal captured in astronaut, satellite imagery

Photos of now-Tropical Depression Cristobal taken by a NASA astronaut and a satellite show the powerful storm tearing through the Gulf Coast region and making its way north across the United States.

Astronaut Chris Cassidy on the International Space Station captured four views of Cristobal, then still a tropical storm, on Monday (June 8) as it appeared from 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Earth. 

"Best of luck to all of the folks in the gulf coast region who are about to deal with the weather from Tropical Storm #Cristobal," Cassidy wrote on Twitter. 

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Cristobal made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday evening (June 7), according to CBS News, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph(80 km/h).

On Tuesday (June 9), NASA released images from the Aqua satellite showing the depression moving north toward the Great Lakes region. The satellite's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) picked up the strongest regions of the storm using infrared images. Infrared data shows which parts of the storm are coldest; these regions are also the most powerful because they have thunderstorms that reach the highest in Earth's atmosphere, NASA said.

Early on Tuesday, MODIS data suggested that the strongest storms were "northeast and north of the elongated center over western Missouri, Iowa and Illinois," NASA said, and the instrument measured storm cloud-top temperatures as cold as minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly minus 57 degrees Celsius). 

Cristobal, however, is quickly evolving and forecasts will change rapidly in the next few days. As of late afternoon Tuesday, the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center says Cristobal is moving across Missouri, with heavy rainfall expected in the middle and upper Mississippi Valley, as well as in the western Great Lakes region.

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Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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