Hurricane Beryl was barreling west toward Jamaica as a Category 5 storm early Tuesday morning, hours after it carved a trail of destruction across the southeast Caribbean and killed at least two people, officials said.

Beryl strengthened into a Category 5 storm late Monday, meaning it had maximum sustained winds of at least 157 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center of the United States. It was forecast to bring hurricane conditions to Jamaica on Wednesday.

Major Atlantic hurricanes have maximum sustained winds of 111 m.p.h. or higher on a five-tier scale that was developed in the 1970s. By Tuesday morning, Beryl had sustained winds near 165 m.p.h., the National Hurricane Center said. No Atlantic storm has ever grown to Category 5 strength this early in the season, according to Philip Klotzbach, a Colorado State University meteorologist who specializes in tropical cyclones.

Beryl roared across several Caribbean islands on Monday, and two deaths were later reported in Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The storm made landfall on Carriacou, a small island north of Grenada, on Monday morning and “flattened” the island in just half an hour, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell of Grenada said in a briefing broadcast on social media. Government officials also expected “extreme” damage on the neighboring island of Petite Martinique.