El Niño is already the strongest we’ve seen in more than 15 years, and it’s only getting stronger, according to a report released Monday from the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization.

In fact, the weather pattern, which has already delivered extreme weather in parts of the world, is on track to be among the most powerful ever. It’s already been blamed for extreme weather events around the world, including major coral bleaching, an intense cyclone season, wildfires in Southeast Asia and drought conditions in parts of Africa, to name just a few.

For California, it means increased risk of heavy flooding and mudslides. Bill Patzert, a climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told the L.A. Times that “El Niño is here. And it is huge,” adding that locals should expect “one storm after another like a conveyor belt.”

Mudslide damage in Los Angeles during the 1998 El Niño. AFP/Getty Images

The good news, according to WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, is that we are better prepared to handle the situation. Although, that might not be enough.

“This event is playing out in uncharted territory,” he said. “Our planet has altered dramatically because of climate change, the general trend towards a warmer global ocean, the loss of Arctic sea ice and of over a million square km of summer snow cover in the northern hemisphere.”

So the combination of the “naturally occurring” event and “human induced climate change” could combine “in ways which we have never before experienced,” Jarraud warned.

The current El Niño pattern, driven by warm surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is expected to peak by the end of 2015 and persist into the early parts of next year.

Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground website pointed out that water temperatures across the equatorial Pacific, which are used to gauge the pattern’s strength, just set a record over a 1-week period. He used this tweet to show how the they have spiked vs. the previous record set in 1997.

The WMO update was published one day ahead of the “El Niño 2015 Conference” slated for Tuesday in New York. The event will be live-streamed here.