With Matthew about 420 miles southeast of Kingston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center downgraded its designation to a Category 4, from the top Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, but Jamaican authorities said they were taking all possible precautions. The storm had winds of 140 mph (220 kph) as it moved northwest and the center was expected to pass across or very close to the southwestern tip of Haiti late Monday before reaching Cuba, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. "The hurricane will cause an interruption, obviously, in our economic activities here," Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Reuters in an interview on Saturday, saying that tourism and agriculture could be most affected. Simultaneously, the storm is forecast to lash southern Haiti, possibly dumping up to 40 inches of rain there and up to 25 inches in Jamaica, which could trigger life-threatening landslides and floods, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Hurricane Matthew becomes a category-5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds up to 160 mph, the strongest hurricane to form over the Caribbean Sea since Hurricane Felix in 2007. It is expected to impact parts of Haiti, Jamaica and eastern Cuba.