Hur­ri­cane Beryl was clos­ing in on the south­east­ern Caribbean, and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials late Sun­day plead­ed with peo­ple to take shel­ter from the dan­ger­ous Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm.

The storm was ex­pect­ed to make land­fall in the Wind­ward Is­lands on Mon­day morn­ing. Hur­ri­cane warn­ings were in ef­fect for Bar­ba­dos, St. Lu­cia, Grena­da, To­ba­go and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

“This is a very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion,” warned the U.S. Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi, say­ing Beryl was “fore­cast to bring life-threat­en­ing winds and storm surge.”

Beryl was cen­tred about 110 miles (175 kilo­me­tres) south-south­east of Bar­ba­dos ear­ly Mon­day. It had max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 120 mph (195 kph) and was mov­ing west at 20 mph (31 kph). It is a com­pact storm, with hur­ri­cane-force winds ex­tend­ing 30 miles (45 kilo­me­tres) from its cen­tre.

It had gained Cat­e­go­ry 4 strength Sun­day be­fore weak­en­ing slight­ly, and fur­ther fluc­tu­a­tions in strength were fore­cast.

A trop­i­cal storm warn­ing was in ef­fect for Mar­tinique and Trinidad. A trop­i­cal storm watch was is­sued for Do­mini­ca, Haiti’s en­tire south­ern coast, and from Pun­ta Palenque in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic west to the bor­der with Haiti.

Beryl was ex­pect­ed to pass just south of Bar­ba­dos ear­ly Mon­day and then head in­to the Caribbean Sea as a ma­jor hur­ri­cane on a path to­ward Ja­maica. It was fore­cast to weak­en by mid­week, but still re­main a hur­ri­cane while head­ing to­ward Mex­i­co.

SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP) —