Flooding near New Madrid, Missouri

Flooding near New Madrid, Missouri

Along a northward loop of the Mississippi River, near the city of New Madrid, flood water rested on agricultural fields in early May 2011. Taken from an altitude of 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth, this astronaut photo shows muddy water filling a broad swath of cropland north of the river bend. In this image, north is toward the lower right.

Crops normally carpet the landscape north of New Madrid. This portion of Missouri, however, lies near the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway. On May 2, 2011, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers breached a levee near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The move spared the residents of Cairo, Illinois, but filled the floodway.

Astronaut photograph ISS027-E-27026 was acquired on May 12, 2011, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera using a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 27 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Michon Scott, based on material from the International Space Station photo gallery.