At a Glance

Tropical Storm Cristobal swept into the Gulf Coast in the first weekend of June 2020.Cristobal triggered a storm surge of almost 6 feet along parts of the northern Gulf Coast.Heavy rain triggered flash flooding as far east as Florida and as far north as Wisconsin and Minnesota.Tornadoes were spawned in Florida and as far north as Illinois. Cristobal was a first-on-record tropical depression in southwest Wisconsin.

Tropical Storm Cristobal made an early-season Gulf of Mexico landfall along the northern Gulf Coast in early June 2020, spreading flooding rain, a few tornadoes and strong wind gusts on an unusual track into the upper Midwest as far north as Wisconsin.

Cristobal's development was fueled by what's called a Central American Gyre, or CAG. This "gyre" is a large, broad area of low pressure that often forms in late spring and early fall over Central America and the western Caribbean Sea. It helped spawn a separate Eastern Pacific Tropical Storm Amanda.

Flooding from Amanda and its remnants the weekend of May 30-31.

Amanda's leftover energy and spin played a role in triggering the development of Tropical Depression Three in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico Monday afternoon, June 1, which then strengthened into Tropical Storm Cristobal on Tuesday, June 2.

Cristobal became the earliest-in-season third named Atlantic storm – previously held by – June 2 in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.

Track history of Tropical Storm Cristobal, color-coded by intensity. Cristobal became a post-tropical cyclone just before its center tracked into southwest Wisconsin on the evening of June 9, 2020.

(Data: NOAA)

From there, Cristobal made landfall Wednesday morning, June 3, just west of Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico, while slinging moisture ashore and slowly weakening. It then moved slowly through Mexico's Campeche and Yucatan states, as well as part of northern Guatemala, as a tropical depression before turning back into the Yucatan Peninsula.

Mexico's National Meteorological Service said parts of eastern Mexico picked up , particularly in parts of Chiapas and Yucatan states.

Cristobal's Rainfall in Central America

Gulf Coast Landfall

Cristobal made landfall along the coast of southeastern Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Grand Isle at 5 p.m. CDT, June 7. Maximum sustained winds at the time were estimated near 50 mph.

Water levels ran as high as at , along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, southeast of New Orleans near the southern shore of Lake Borgne.

In , storm surge surpassed 3.5 feet on the , causing water to pile up on Lakeshore Drive.

Storm surge caused water to cover roads near Waveland and , where water levels were nearly 6 feet above normal.

Storm surge flooding persisted into June 8, as onshore winds persisted.

New Orleans set a new record-low sea-level pressure for the month of June as Cristobal approached the coast of southeastern Louisiana. The pressure in New Orleans dipped to just before landfall, topping the previous record - - set during Tropical Storm Bill on June 30, 2003, according to David Roth, a meteorologist at NOAA's Weather Prediction Center.

Cristobal was the , according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach, tropical scientist at Colorado State University.

Rainfall rates of 3 to 6 inches per hour on June 7 triggered significant , trapping cars.

Farther west, a weather station in Suwannee Springs, Florida, reported 13.03 inches of rain between midnight and 8 p.m. EDT on June 7.

The day before landfall on June 6, an , just east and southeast of downtown. Other brief tornadoes touched down on June 7 in north Florida, north of Gainesville and northwest of Orlando.

Unusual Upper Midwest Track

Perhaps the biggest oddity of Cristobal was its inland track deep into the upper Midwest.

Cristobal remained a tropical depression until the evening of , according to NOAA's best track data, then tracked into southwest and northern Wisconsin as a "post-tropical cyclone" through early on June 10.

Cristobal was only the fourth Atlantic tropical cyclone remnant to reach Wisconsin in more than a century of records, according to the National Weather Service office in Milwaukee, though the center of Gilbert's remnant in 1988 did not track over land in the Badger State.

were set in Dubuque, Iowa and in Madison, Green Bay, Rhinelander and Wausau, Wisconsin, according to David Roth from NOAA WPC.

Damaging thunderstorms winds on the eastern flank of Cristobal downed trees in parts of Chicagoland on June 9, and in southwest Lower Michigan. Rain and strong winds gusts knocked out power to about .

Cristobal's tropical downpours triggered inland flash flooding from parts of Arkansas and northern Mississippi to northwest Wisconsin.

Radar recap and storm track of Tropical Storm Cristobal from June 6-10, 2020.

(Track data: NOAA)

One to two feet of water was reported in a subdivision in Oxford, Mississippi.

Multiple mudslides were reported in southeast Minnesota between Rochester and Winona, where some locations picked up 4 to 6 inches of rain.

A section of state highway 27 east of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, was undermined by heavy rain.

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