A tourist visiting Jamaica described the record-breaking Hurriane Melissa as "a freight train with a jet engine."

Hurricane Melissa— one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded—is now off Cuba’s eastern coast, after leaving a trail of destruction across the large island and its much smaller neighbor, Jamaica.

The capitals and exclamation points are warranted. Hurricane Melissa is an extraordinary storm, even among the many massive, fast-growing, devastating cyclones that have been erupting in the Atlantic Ocean in recent years.

Hurricane Melissa made landfall Wednesday morning in Cuba as a powerful Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 mph.

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.

The hurricane that tore through the Caribbean this week broke records, rapidly intensifying and surprising some meteorologists.