Beryl slams into Caribbean and strengthens into earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane

Hurricane Beryl ripped off doors, windows, and roofs in homes across the southeastern Caribbean after making landfall on the island of Carriacou, the earliest storm of Category 5 strength to form in the Atlantic.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, and communications were largely down across the region.

Streets from St Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and scores of other debris scattered by winds up to 160mph.

The storm snapped banana trees in half and killed cows that lay in green pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.

Fishing vessels damaged by Hurricane Beryl at the Bridgetown Fisheries in Barbados (AP)

Late Monday, it strengthened to a Category 5 storm. It is the earliest Category 5 hurricane observed in the Atlantic basin on record, and only the second Category 5 hurricane in July after Hurricane Emily in 2005, the National Hurricane Center said.

"Beryl is unprecedentedly strange," said Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters, a former US government hurricane meteorologist who flew into storms.

"It is so far outside the climatology that you look at it and you say, 'How did this happen in June?"'

A damaged restaurant in Christ Church, Barbados (AFP via Getty Images)

Beryl was still swiping the southeast Caribbean late on Monday afternoon as it began moving into the Caribbean Sea on a track that would take it just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico's Yucatan peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.

Late on Monday, Beryl was located about 575 miles east-southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and was moving west-northwest at 21 mph, with hurricane conditions possible in Jamaica on Wednesday.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for the entire southern coast of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

"Beryl is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane as its moves over the eastern Caribbean," the National Hurricane Centre said.The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

Saint James, Barbados (AFP via Getty Images)

Terence Walters, Grenada's national disaster coordinator, said that on Monday afternoon, officials received "reports of devastation" from Carriacou and surrounding islands.

Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said he would travel to Carriacou as soon as it was safe, noting the "extensive" storm surge.

He said that Grenada officials had to evacuate patients to a lower floor after the hospital roof was damaged.

"There is the likelihood of even greater damage," he told reporters. "We have no choice but to continue to pray."

In Barbados, Wilfred Abrahams, minister of home affairs and information, said drones would assess damage once Beryl passes.

NBC Radio in St Vincent and the Grenadines reported that roofs were torn off churches and schools as communications began collapsing across the southeast Caribbean.

Beryl was the earliest Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record, beating Hurricane Dennis, which became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.

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