The damage Hurricane Ida inflicted on Louisiana was terrible—second only to Katrina 16 years to the day before Ida—but pretty much what forecasters expected. It was after Ida lumbered north through the Mid-Atlantic states that it began some truly unanticipated and mortal mayhem. More people died during Ida’s prolonged exit across the United States than were lost when the storm made its ferocious Category 4 landfall on Port Fourchon, not far from New Orleans. Thirty-one people were killed in Louisiana, but 29 died in New Jersey, 18 in New York, five in Pennsylvania, and eight more in other states.

Like an increasing number of storms brewed over Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf waters during our era of late global warming, Ida packed an unprecedented wallop with sustained winds of more than 150 miles per hour, and Ida’s slower pace above overheated waters meant she carried a vastly heavier load of water. That water came down in monsoon-level rains as Ida lingered over the northeast, creating astonishing scenes in New York City as streets and subways quickly flooded.

Ida provided another example of the real-world implications of climate change. Those “unusual weather events” that climatologists have long predicted are no longer abstract projections but real-time threats arriving much earlier than anticipated. While humanitarian groups have properly focused on the profound impact of climate change-juiced weather events on vulnerable communities in the developing world—where such storms threaten to produce the greatest human suffering—it’s become clear that even advanced economies like the United States are not exactly prepared. European states were shocked just weeks before Ida by terrifying flash floods in July that tore communities and infrastructure apart in Belgium and Germany after hours of torrential rain, claiming more than 220 lives, and it seems each year California’s fire season becomes increasing uncontrollable.