Brutal winds and heavy rains lashed Jamaica on Monday ahead of Hurricane Melissa unleashing what the prime minister warned could be a massively destructive storm -- the island's most violent on record.

Melissa was charting a painstakingly slow path through the Caribbean as a monster Category 5 storm.

Melissa has already been blamed for at least four deaths in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Its heavy rains combined with intense winds -- Melissa's maximum speeds are 175 miles (280 kilometers) per hour, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest update -- could wreak devastation on the scale of historic hurricanes including 2017's Maria or 2005's Katrina.

Those massive storms, which have grown increasingly common as the climate warms, left indelible impacts on Puerto Ric

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