**scroll down for updates**

Credit: AP

Galveston, nearly empty, is reporting three large fires engulfing historic buildings. Via Reuters:

A large fire broke out in downtown Galveston on Friday night, engulfing three buildings and sending flames shooting into the sky as the first winds from Hurricane Rita began whipping the coastal island.

Fire crews attempted to fight the blaze on the eastern side of the city, which had been mostly evacuated in anticipation of the storm. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

Winds of 60 to 70 mph (96-113 kph) pushed the flames across roofs of nearby buildings and sent sparks swirling down on firefighters, forcing them to stay well back.

One of the buildings appeared to have burned nearly to the ground and the difficult conditions for firefighters were expected to get far worse.

“We’re expecting winds of 100 miles an hour in 20 to 25 minutes. I recommend you get to shelter,” one Galveston police officer told a Reuters reporter at the scene.

More at KRISTV.

Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, are being dubbed “Ground Zero” by the cable news shows. Bloggers with local angles:

Mike’s Noise - Port Arthur native.
Michael J.W. Stickings - local round-up.
Jeremy Hall is a National Guardsman in NOLA and has a collection of photos.

The latest National Hurricane Center advisory is here.

One Port Arthur resident prepared for the worst:

“If you see this Social Security number on a body, it’s mine,” said Norma Kirk, 64, a resident of Port Arthur, directly in the storm’s path. She wrote the number on her arm before police showed up just ahead of the storm to take her to safety.

Another dude in Galveston decided to go…surfing:

The man, who was not identified, was taken into custody by police after coming out of the surf. Police said he was apparently not taking Rita seriously, attempting to surf off the shore of Galveston.

Check in with the WSJ’s Storm Tracker for latest movement.

Over at the Daily Kos, there’s infighting over whether the anti-war protests here in D.C. should go on. Writes one diarist:

Rita is predicted to make landfall on Saturday. I don’t believe that the anti-war rallies should go on as scheduled.

On a personal level I think it is disrespectful to our fellow citizens who will be having their lives torn to shreds and makes the protestors seem disconnected from the rest of the country. On a political level, I think it is bad form and has the potential to alienate many people who are finally coming around to the fact that the war was a really bad idea.

I think protests can be productive, but they can also be damning. I hope the nation-wide anti-war rallies are rescheduled to show respect for the lives of our Gulf Coast brethren.

Not a chance, I’m afraid, but it was at least a nice try at injecting a dose of decency into the land of the moonbats.

1230am EDT update. From weather blogger Jeff Masters:

Rita is making landfall near Port Arthur, TX, as a weak Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds. There is nothing weak at all about any major hurricane, and it definitely a bad night to be holed up in your house or shelter listening to the awesome destruction unleased by this powerful hurricane. Radar shows some very intense echoes in the northern eyewall smashing into the coast, and infrared satellite imagery confirms the presence of extremely cold cloud tops in the northern eyewall. It appears that the interaction of the eyewall with land is producing extra surface convergence of winds that is forcing up some strong updrafts, creating very high thunderstorm tops.

Where will Rita go?

Most of the latest model runs show Rita making a anti-cyclonic loop over northeastern Texas and central Louisiana, then perhaps heading back south to punish the landfall area five days from now. She may even move back over the waters of the Gulf. She would no longer be a tropical cyclone at that point, and redevelopment is not expected.

Mccannta is liveblogging. He points to a report from Petrified Truth about the good folks in Katy, Texas, opening their doors to Rita evacuees.

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