Melissa is now a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds decreased to 150 mph, but it remains an extremely dangerous storm as it sweeps across western Jamaica. The center is currently located about 10 miles south of Montego Bay, as the storm is moving to the north-northeast at 8 mph.

Hurricane Melissa is set to bring catastrophic winds, flooding and storm surge to Jamaica, forecasters have warned.

Melissa was a Category 5 hurricane, the highest level, when it made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica. It was the strongest to hit the island since recordkeeping began 174 years ago. Melissa caused power outages, fallen trees, landslides, and heavy flooding and tore off roofs in Jamaica.

Under sheets of rain and laden with possessions, residents of southeast Cuba fled inland Tuesday -- escaping the peril of the coast before Hurricane Melissa's arrival.Already, curtains of rain, dark skies,

Jamaica is expected to be in the storm's eyewall, which refers to the band of dense clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall generally produces the fiercest winds and heaviest rainfall, according to Deanna Hence, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.