The days leading up to Hurricane Harvey’s landfall in Texas last week were some of the most nerve-wracking in meteorological history. Forecasters watched helplessly as a true monster storm—one that would eventually become the most extreme rain event in recorded American history—moved toward Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city. They gave the most dire warnings they could, developing new colors for maps to show unprecedented intensity, and using more hyperbolic language than ever before. But there was no avoiding the mass devastation. Homes were destroyed. At least 60 people died. The flooding has not even fully receded, and now forecasters are tracking another frightening storm that they don’t quite have the language for.

I am at a complete and utter loss for words looking at Irma's appearance on satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/B0ewFyvcSv — Taylor Trogdon (@TTrogdon) September 5, 2017

Hurricane Irma is not only the most powerful Atlantic Ocean storm in history, but has maintained its terrifying wind strength for longer than any other hurricane. Irma is a Category 5 storm—the most powerful rating—but it’s so strong that some scientists are wondering whether to create a Category 6. Worst of all, Irma is threatening carnage worse than Harvey, having already wreaked havoc in the Caribbean as it barrels toward the mainland U.S., where both Florida and South Carolina have declared states of emergency.

These two massive storms don’t even represent the full extent of the world’s extreme weather woes right now. As Vox reported last week, “Unusually heavy monsoon rains over the last several weeks have killed over 1,000 people across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. In all, over 41 million people have suffered the direct impact of the rain.” British Columbia is having its worst wildfire season in recorded history. History-making heat waves and drought are driving an unusually strong wildfire season that’s burning up the American West. Every county in the state of Washington is under a state of emergency, and ash is falling like snow in Seattle. The smoke is affecting air quality all the way to the East Coast.

Some extreme weather is to be expected. It is hurricane season, after all. It’s also wildfire season. It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, so it’s pretty hot in a lot of places. And in South Asia, it’s monsoon season.

But the extreme weather events right now are some of the most extreme we’ve ever seen, threatening more human lives than usual. Climate scientists have been warning us for years about this very scenario. “We have extensive scientific evidence that extreme events are increasing around the world, and will continue to increase as climate change gets worse,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University. “We see global-scale temperature increases. Global sea level is rising. The amount of heat and atmosphere and ocean is increasing. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is increasing. What we’re seeing as a result of those changes is an increase in not only the mean, but the tails of destructive weather events.”