Hurricane Melissa intensified to Category 5 on Monday as it approached Jamaica with up to 30 inches of rain and a potentially life-threatening storm surge.

Melissa is expected to make landfall on the island on Tuesday and pass through Cuba and the Bahamas until Wednesday.

Melissa was centered about 130 miles south-southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, and about 315 miles south-southwest of Guantánamo, Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph and was moving west at 3 mph, the center said.

Category 5 is the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds exceeding 157 mph. Melissa is the most powerful hurricane in recent history to directly hit the small Caribbean nation.

Some local areas of eastern Jamaica could receive 40 inches of rain, while western Haiti could receive 16 inches, according to the hurricane center. “Catastrophic flash floods and numerous landslides are likely,” he warns.

The slow-moving storm killed at least three people in Haiti and a fourth person in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.

“I want to urge Jamaicans to take this seriously,” said Desmond McKenzie, vice-president of the Jamaica Disaster Risk Management Council. “Don't play with Melissa. She's not a safe bet.”

The hurricane is expected to make landfall again later Tuesday in eastern Cuba. A hurricane warning was in effect for the provinces of Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Holguin, while a tropical storm warning was in effect for Las Tunas. Up to 20 inches of rain was forecast for parts of Cuba, along with significant storm surge along the coast.

A record storm for Jamaica

Melissa could be the strongest hurricane Jamaica has seen in decades, said Evan Thompson, senior director of the Jamaica Weather Service. He warned that cleanup and damage assessment would be significantly delayed due to landslides, flooding and blocked roads.

In addition to rainfall, Melissa is likely to bring a potentially life-threatening storm surge to the southern coast of Jamaica, peaking about 4 meters above the ground, near and east of where Melissa's center makes landfall, the US center said.

“Don’t make stupid decisions,” warned Daryl Vaz, Jamaica’s Minister of Transport. “We are going through a very, very serious period in the coming days.”

A success on Hispaniola

The storm has already brought heavy rain to the Dominican Republic, where schools and government offices were ordered to remain closed Monday in four of the nine provinces still under red alert.

Melissa damaged more than 750 homes across the country, displacing more than 3,760 people. Floodwaters also cut off access to at least 48 communities, officials said.

In neighboring Haiti, the storm destroyed crops in three regions, including 37 acres of corn, at a time when at least 5.7 million people, more than half the country's population, are suffering hunger crisis levelswith 1.9 million people facing emergency levels of hunger.

“Floods are blocking access to agricultural land and markets, compromising harvests and the winter agricultural season,” the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said.

Melissa is expected to continue to dump torrential rains on southern Haiti and the southern Dominican Republic in the coming days.