MEXICO CITY — Oh, no. Not again.

This was the general sentiment across a broad area of the eastern Caribbean on Sunday as residents, some still sifting through the wreckage left by Hurricane Irma, braced for the impact of yet another powerful storm stalking them in the Atlantic Ocean.

Hurricane Maria was rumbling toward the Lesser Antilles, the crescent of islands that curves from the Virgin Islands to Grenada, and forecasters predicted that the storm would continue to grow as it plowed west-northwest through the Caribbean. It may reach major hurricane status by midweek as it approaches Puerto Rico and the British and United States Virgin Islands.

“I don’t think that anybody is emotionally prepared for it,” said Cruselda Roberts, a real estate agent in the United States Virgin Islands, which were hammered by Hurricane Irma. “But we’ll do our best.”

The new storm comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded, made landfall in Antigua and Barbuda before sweeping through the Caribbean and Florida, killing dozens, destroying entire neighborhoods and leaving thousands homeless. Another Atlantic storm, Hurricane Jose, threatened the region in the wake of Irma, but ended up skirting the Lesser Antilles before turning north.