Hurricane Melissa — already weighing in at Category 4 — may strengthen to Category 5 by Sunday night and inundate parts of the northern Caribbean early this week with 30 or more inches of rain , forecasters said Sunday.

Torrential rain and potential catastrophic flooding were in the near future for Jamaica, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, with Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and other countries in Melissa’s path. Jamaica’s southern tip was first in its sights, where the monster storm was expected to make landfall Monday night or Tuesday morning as a major hurricane.

“Conditions are going to go down rapidly today,” NHC Deputy Director Jamie Rhome said of Jamaica on Sunday. “Be ready to ride this out for several days.”

Even as a tropical storm, the system had already claimed

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