Hurricane Beryl charges toward Jamaica as record-breaking Category 5 after leaving Caribbean islands in ruins

The storm is expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica on Wednesday and impact the Cayman Islands on Thursday, where a hurricane watch has been issued.

The storm continues to smash records as it kicks off an exceptionally early hurricane season as the earliest Category 5 hurricane – and only the second Atlantic storm of such strength to be recorded in July. Beryl alarming strengthening has been fed by abnormally warm ocean waters driven by planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.

It took only minutes for Beryl to tear through Grenada on Monday, blasting through buildings and knocking out power and phone service to almost all of the island’s residents, the governor’s office said.

“In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said Monday.

Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas, on Monday, packing damaging winds and extreme rainfall.

The Category 1 hurricane, with sustained winds of 80 mph, was the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season to make landfall in the United States. It was also the earliest hurricane landfall in Texas in nearly 40 years.

Last week, Beryl hammered several Caribbean islands and became the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic. A Category 5 — the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale — has sustained winds of 157 mph or greater.

The storm weakened before reaching Mexico, but it was still the strongest hurricane to impact Jamaica in more than 15 years. Track Beryl’s path.

Beryl was only the second Category 5 to ever be recorded in the Atlantic in the month of July. Its alarming strength was fed by abnormally warm ocean waters driven by planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.

“Hurricanes don’t know what month it is. They only know what their ambient environment is,” Jim Kossin, a hurricane expert and science advisor at nonprofit First Street Foundation, told CNN.