At least one person has been killed after Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc across Grenada, the prime minister of the south-eastern Caribbean island nation, Dickon Mitchell, said on Monday evening.
Beryl made landfall in Carriacou, an island that is part of Grenada, on Monday morning as a category 4 hurricane but has since been upgraded to a "potentially catastrophic" category 5, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said late on Monday.
Beryl brought maximum sustained windspeeds of 261 kilometres per hour and is "expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica later this week," the NHC said in an advisory published at 11 pm AST (0300 GMT).
According to experts, never before has a hurricane of this magnitude been recorded in the region this early in the year.
The storm brought devastation to Grenada's Carriacou and Petite Martinique, damaging many homes, premier Mitchell said in a briefing. Power lines were cut and communications between the islands was difficult, he said.
So far one person was killed when a tree fell onto a house, he said.
Neighbouring island states were also battered by heavy rains and strong winds, including St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Lucia.
Images circulating on social media showed flooding and the rubble of damaged houses.
The centre of Beryl is moving west-northwestward and expected near Jamaica on Wednesday, according to the NHC. On Thursday, the hurricane is expected to make landfall on the Mexican peninsula of Yucatán.
Beryl strengthened from a tropical storm to a category 4 hurricane in less than 24 hours on Sunday. Hurricane season in the Atlantic usually peaks around September, when water temperatures are highest.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expects an unusually strong hurricane season this year amid rising water temperatures due to climate change and La Niña, a season of cooler water temperatures in the Pacific expected to set in this year.