Streets from St Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, fallen trees, downed power lines and cows lay dead in fields.

“Right now, I’m real heartbroken,” said Vichelle Clark King as she stared at her flooded shop in Bridgetown, Barbados.

Beryl is only the second category 5 storm to be recorded in July since 2005 and the earliest storm to rapidly intensify from an unnamed depression into a category 4 in just 48 hours.

Scientists said the storm was fuelled by unprecedentedly warm sea temperatures.

“This is sort of our worst scenario… We’re starting early, some very severe storms,” Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric scientist at the University at Albany, said.

Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, called Beryl “not just a one off” but a harbinger of greater threats to come in the 2024 hurricane season.