After weeks of relentless rains, a new cycle of flash floods devastated parts of Pakistan over the weekend, raising the country’s monsoon death toll to 1,136 since June, according to the country’s National Disaster Management Authority. Nearly 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed and over 33 million Pakistanis affected, with displaced families sleeping on roads, in lean-tos and tents, and in makeshift shelters in schools and mosques.

“This is very far from a normal monsoon – it is climate dystopia at our doorstep,” Sherry Rehman, a Pakistan senator and the country’s climate change minister, told AFP on Monday.

The monsoon season began earlier than normal this year, in mid-June, and the country has experienced its heaviest rain on record since the 1960s. The southern province of Sindh received 784 percent more rainfall this month than the August average and southwestern Baluchistan received 500 percent more, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department as reported in the New Delhi Times. The department warns that rains could continue into next month.

Aid from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates arrived in Islamabad on Monday for areas that have been hit by what Rehman called “the monster monsoon of the decade.” But distributing supplies will be difficult: Thousands of miles of roads and more than 150 bridges have been destroyed throughout the country. Civilian rescuers and government soldiers are still struggling to evacuate thousands of people marooned in inaccessible areas.

Read the full article about Pakistan's climate flooding by Blanca Begert at Grist.