Rita Roars Ashore

MSNBC reports the eye of Hurricane Rita made landfall at 3:38 a.m. ET on the extreme southwest coast of Louisiana between Sabine Pass, Texas, and Johnson’s Bayou:

Hurricane Rita made landfall Saturday morning, igniting the pre-dawn sky with exploding transformers and menacing coastal towns along the Texas-Louisiana border with 120-mph winds and storm surges that experts said could strike a catastrophic blow to the oil refining industry.

[. . .]

At 4:45 a.m. ET, the storm center was near Port Arthur, Texas, bombarding it and two other oil refining towns — Beaumont, Texas, and Lake Charles, La. — with 20-foot storm surges, towering waves and up to 25 inches of rain.

“That’s where people are going to die,” Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane center, told MNSBC-TV. “All these areas are just going to get absolutely clobbered by the storm surge.”

The storm is leaving its mark with renewed flooding in New Orleans and fires in Galveston.

It will get worse. According to MSNBC, Rita was likely to stall, trapped between high-pressure cells to its east and its west, essentially freezing it in place over east Texas and southwest Louisiana.

Rita’s maximum sustained wind remained at 120 mph.

Additional coverage at Michelle Malkin and Outside The Beltway.