The northern eyewall of Category 4 Hurricane Beryl scraped along Jamaica’s southern coast Wednesday afternoon, walloping the island with high winds and drenching rains for most of the day with the worst impacts on the south end of the island.

Early Wednesday evening, reports of felled trees, impassable roads, extensive power outages and winds so strong they stripped roofs from buildings — including the international airport — began cropping up across Jamaica, where hundreds waited out the storm in hurricane shelters.

It’s too soon to know the full extent of the havoc the storm wrought on the island nation, but it’s already left at least seven dead from its first brush with the eastern Caribbean and leveled some of the smaller islands in the southeast Caribbean.

“It is almost Armageddon-like, almost total damage or destruction of all buildings whether they be public buildings, homes or other private facilities,” said Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell after a helicopter survey on Tuesday.

As of the 5 p.m. Eastern time update Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said Beryl was still holding on to its Category 4 status with 140 mph sustained winds, a slight decline from earlier in the day. In a potential good sign, the initial readings in the Jamaican capital Kingston were significantly less, with sustained winds topping 48 mph and a wind gust as high as 81 mph.

After some slight weakening just before it closed in, Beryl appeared to be more organized Wednesday afternoon with a clear-out eye. Forecasters expect it to bring up to 9 feet of “life-threatening” storm surge and up to a foot of rain.

Beryl was about 65 miles west-southwest of Kingston, Jamaica and headed west-northwest at 20 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 45 miles from the storm’s eye, putting Kingston within reach of the worst of the storm’s winds and covering nearly the entire island with tropical-storm-force winds, which reached up to 185 miles from the center.

Jamaica was getting smacked with the upper right section of the storm, also known as the dirty side, which brings the most storm surge and holds the greatest potential for tornado formation. It’s “the worst side of the storm,” wrote Sammy Hadi, a meteorologist with the Miami office of the National Weather Service, on Twitter.

Next on the forecast track is the Cayman Islands, which are also under hurricane warnings. Beryl is on track to pass south of the islands on Thursday as a strong Category 3 before heading onward to the Yucatan Peninsula.

From there, Beryl is forecast to make another landfall in the Quintana Roo region of Mexico as a Category 1 hurricane, before re-emerging in the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm. New on Wednesday morning, the hurricane center now predicts Beryl could re-strengthen to a Category 1 hurricane again before striking the northeast coast of Mexico.

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