Nothing of surprise in the 11pm discussion, except that they don't raise the intensity much, but they don't drop it much before landfall either: a solid Cat 4. At that intensity it's going to be bad.

The track at point of landfall remains essentially the same as the last two discussions (I plotted them all)...just west of Port Arthur. CNN just showed a visual which indicated most of the land there would be under water in a storm surge. Wistfully wishing they'd thought to do to that before Katrina hit the MS Gulf Coast. Might have saved several hundred lives.

Rita's large windfield is about to run out of real estate. Won't that have a significant effect on intensity starting about 12 hours from now?

Note -- you can see the convection around the outer eyewall on the sat wv 02:45Z image.

What does shortwave IR show vs IR? The shortwave IR is looking very symmetrical and values around the storm maxed out on the scale.