A man from civil protection asks residents to evacuate their homes located near the Grise river in Haiti on Monday. The center of Hurricane Matthew is expected to pass near or over southwestern Haiti today.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hurricane Matthew roared into the southwestern coast of Haiti today, threatening a largely rural corner of the impoverished country with devastating storm conditions as it headed north toward Cuba and the eastern coast of Florida.

The dangerous Category 4 storm made landfall around dawn on Haiti’s southern peninsula, where many people live along the coast in shacks of wood and corrugated steel that stand little chance of withstanding the force of the system’s maximum sustained winds of 145 mph.

Matthew was also expected to bring 15-25 inches of rain, and up to 40 inches in isolated places, along with up to 10 feet of storm surge and battering waves, said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“They are getting everything a major hurricane can throw at them,” Feltgen said.

The storm was moving along the Windward Passage between Haiti and Jamaica, where it was also dumping heavy rain that caused flooding in parts of the country.

It was headed for southeastern Cuba and then into the Bahamas.

The hurricane center said it would likely issue a tropical storm watch or hurricane watch for the Florida Keys or the Florida peninsula and that it could create dangerous beach conditions along the east coast later in the week.

As dawn broke, people in the south coast tourist town of Port Salut described howling winds and big waves slamming the beaches and washing over the coastal road.

“The winds are making so many bad noises. We’re just doing our best to stay calm,” said Jenniflore Desrosiers early today as she huddled with her family in her fragile cinderblock home, which had sprung numerous leaks from pelting rain.

Haiti’s civil protection office said a number of south coast towns partially flooded overnight. Landslides and downed trees on road were preventing movement in numerous areas.

At one point a Category 5 storm, and the region’s strongest hurricane since Felix in 2007, Matthew was expected to make landfall in Cuba about 50 miles east of the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.