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Hurricane Beryl was approaching the Caribbean with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph early Monday — leading islanders to prepare for the violent Category 3 storm to strike later in the morning.

The National Hurricane Center downgraded Beryl from a Category 4 in its 2 a.m. Monday update.

Beryl was expected to move across the Windward Islands on Monday morning and through the southeastern and central Caribbean Sea late Monday through Wednesday, the Hurricane Center said. “Life-threatening” winds and storm surge were also expected early Monday.

Hurricane warnings have been issued for Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadine Islands, Grenada and Tobago, while tropical storm advisories stretched as far north as the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The Hurricane Center is expecting a storm surge of 6 to 9 feet, as well as 3 to 6 inches of rain.

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By late Sunday, much of the region had shut down public life, closing storefronts and requiring residents and tourists to take shelter indoors.

Researchers have been warning for months that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be one for the record books, and now it is: There is no precedent for a storm to intensify this quickly, nor reach this strength, in this part of the ocean in June. Records date from 1851.

Grenada entered a state of emergency Sunday evening as a precaution for the storm charging its way, and Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell urged the island’s 125,000 residents to stay home. St. Lucian Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre said a national shutdown in the country of about 170,000 would begin at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Meteorological Service issued a flash-flood warning to its 100,000 residents.

In Bridgetown, the Barbadian capital, Doriel Gill-Skinner spent Sunday telling others about a neighborhood shelter that’s available for those that need it, she told The Washington Post. The storm wasn’t expected to hit the island for several hours, but by early afternoon she had prepared her grab-and-go bag of nonperishable food items, water and a change of clothes, and busied herself by readying her neighbors.

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“The mood in the community is calm and confident,” she said. “We are taking the storm seriously and are prepared for it.”

At midday Sunday, Michael Tiller was looking at blue skies and calm, clear water from the patio of a rented vacation home in Barbados. “You can’t really tell there’s a hurricane coming,” the Michigan resident said. “It’s a really beautiful day out here.”

Tiller plans to hunker down as soon as the winds pick up. The property managers of the home he is sharing with his family for the week boarded up the windows and glass doors earlier Sunday. The family is bracing for strong winds and power outages, but Tiller said he isn’t too concerned. The family is planning to return to the United States on Wednesday.

Nauman Khan, visiting from Toronto, spent most of Sunday exploring Barbados with his wife and two children. Like Tiller, Khan said there was little to suggest that a major storm was on its way.

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“It’s been mostly sunny the whole day, with a slight breeze — a quintessentially Barbadian day,” Khan said.

But the winds began picking up in the late afternoon, and his resort on the southern end of the island told guests that the on-site restaurant would stop dine-in services. Customers were asked to spend the remainder of the evening in their rooms.

“I haven’t seen any panic,” Khan said. “The DJ is still playing. The bar is still open.”

Over the weekend, Beryl strengthened quickly. It went from a tropical storm to a Category 3 hurricane in 36 hours and intensified by 75 mph during that time. According to Sam Lillo, a researcher at DTN Weather, that level of rapid intensification has never happened in June and has happened only twice in July.

There is a firm link between rapid intensification — the strengthening of hurricanes — and human-induced climate change. Ocean waters are running 3 or 4 degrees above average, reminiscent of August rather than June.

Before now, the Atlantic had only seen two major hurricanes, rated Category 3 or higher, in June — Audrey in 1957 and Alma in 1966. The Atlantic’s Main Development Region, between northern South America and Africa, was believed to be inhospitable to major hurricanes during June — until now.

In the center of that path, Grenadians were preparing for the worst and hoping to avoid a repeat of 2004’s Hurricane Ivan, which killed at least 37 people and damaged 90 percent of homes on the island.

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Kitaka Chakumba Mawuto recalled that during that storm, he and his family watched the roof fly off their home before they rushed to a neighbor’s house.

“It was traumatizing, but it brought us together,” said Mawuto, 30. His family had no idea what they were in for during Ivan, but he is better prepared now. He hopes authorities are, too, he said.

Several islands north, in St. Lucia, Rhyesa Joseph said Sunday that she has prepared as much as she can, ensuring all her electronics are charged and setting aside essentials. She’s more worried about the safety of others on the 28-mile-long island and what the storm will leave behind, she said.

“I am very concerned about the economic implications of the hurricane, the damage to infrastructure, the food insecurity it may cause,” Joseph said. “We know what has happened to our neighbors because of hurricanes, and we ourselves have experienced Hurricane Tomas and other storms.” Hurricane Tomas killed at least eight people in the Windward Islands before killing 35 more in Haiti over about a week in 2010. It caused about $336 million of damage in St. Lucia.

Still, on Sunday afternoon, Joseph said it was “a quintessentially beautiful day,” and the weather was sunny and hot.

“Literally the calm before the storm,” she said.

Jiselle Lee contributed to this report.

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