MIAMI — Hurricane Beryl broke a new slew of records overnight Monday by strengthening into a massive Category 5 hurricane — the earliest on record in July — and putting Jamaica more solidly in the crosshairs of a hit from a major storm on Wednesday.

All week, the National Hurricane Center has forecast a weakening late Tuesday and early Wednesday, when conditions in the Caribbean shift and less-friendly winds start to tear the storm down.

But Hurricane Beryl appears determined to run out the meteorological clock, strengthening until the last possible moment over the hotter-than-usual waters in the Caribbean.

The latest forecast called for Beryl’s eye to pass just south of Jamaica as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday, then swipe the Cayman Islands as a Category 2 hurricane on Thursday before making landfall in Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday as a Category 1.

Earlier forecasts appeared to show Beryl slowing down even further, or even stopping, over the Yucatan, but the latest tracks suggest the storm could emerge in the Gulf of Mexico as at least a tropical storm and potentially find a new target for landfall over the weekend.

“The models show quite a wide range of solutions, with guidance between a strong tropical storm to a major hurricane while it nears the Yucatan Peninsula,” forecasters wrote. “This is quite an uncertain forecast beyond a couple of days.”

As of the 8 a.m. advisory, Beryl was packing sustained winds of 165 mph and headed west-northwest at 22 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended 40 miles from the clearly-defined eye, and tropical-storm-force winds extended out about 125 miles from the center.

In Beryl’s wake, residents of the eastern Caribbean islands slammed by the fast-moving and hard-hitting storm were assessing damages on Tuesday.

Particularly hard hit is St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Union Island, where at least one death has been reported.

Multiple reports suggest 90% of the houses and businesses on the island have been destroyed.

With Beryl expecting to bring life-threatening winds and storm surges to Jamaica, the government has activated disaster preparedness and its response mechanisms in anticipation of the hurricane’s passage.

The eastern Caribbean also remains on guard against another potential tropical system, a disturbance that the hurricane center is tracking in the central Atlantic.

On Tuesday morning, the hurricane center continued its trend of lowering the system’s chances of formation anytime soon, this time to a 30% shot over the next week and 20% chance of strengthening into a tropical depression in the next two days.

“Environmental conditions are only marginally conducive for development of this system,” forecasters wrote. “Interests in the Lesser Antilles should still monitor the progress of this system, with heavy rainfall possible midweek.”

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