Scientists say that climate change is increasing the power and frequency of tornadoes, hurricanes, and drought-driven fires throughout the United States. But climate change is affecting us in more subtle, albeit no less dramatic ways, too, as this photo essay by Paul Johnson shows. Welcome to Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Devils Lake used to be a nice, small lake. Farms and towns surrounded it, enjoying the advantages it provided for irrigation. But for the past few decades, the lake has been living up to its name, wiping out those farms and towns along with roads, railways, and highways as it expands inexorably. Scientists say the lake’s growth has been caused by abnormal rainfall in the area produced by climate change.

It wasn’t always this way. As American Scientist reports, Devils Lake had almost evaporated after the Dust Bowl, the long series of dust storms and droughts that came in three waves—in 1934, 1936, and from 1939 to 1940. But today, the lake covers 201,390 acres and has been rising steadily, going from a depth of nine feet to 42 feet since 1964.

Scientist say that the lake’s volume is now 370 times larger than it was in 1940. And its expansion, they claim, is not going to stop. The Devils Lake basin is a much larger area than the actual lake, which means that it has plenty of room to grow, as you can see in the image below. The land there is very flat, so a few inches of continuous rainfall will cause the lake to expand thousands of acres in a single season.

The city of Devils Lake is building an expansion to the current levee that protects the area from annihilation because the waters keep rising. Some have suggested moving the entire town of Minnewaukan—which now sits on the lake’s western shore opposite Devils Lake city—before it is too late. Just in 2016, 130,800 acres of farmland were flooded.

Johnson’s photo series captures the human drama at play here. Here you can see farms standing in the middle of the water—some of them about to collapse. The lake’s expansion—as one of the farmers affected told journalist Sharlene Breakey—“was like dying a slow death.” Breakey relates the farmer’s disbelief after the first 1,500 acres of his land were submerged in water: “We saw fish jumping while we filled up the tractors and knew the house was next.”