Katia and Jose? Seriously? As if it were not bad enough that Houston is still drying out from Hurricane Harvey and Florida is hunkered down in the face of Hurricane Irma, last week hurricanes Katia and Jose formed, respectively spinning in the Gulf of Mexico and whirling west across the Atlantic. We face multiple, simultaneous, catastrophes.

But it's not just their timing that has some of us watching weather maps with fearful speculation. It's also the record-shredding ferocity of the two storms that have so far impacted the United States. They've produced superlatives like a Donald Trump press conference.

Harvey dropped more rain on the continental United States than any storm ever has. At about the size of Texas, Irma is a behemoth, not to mention one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded.

And the timing of them, combined with the historic awfulness of them, feels more sinister than simple coincidence, does it not?