Quote: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Rita weakened to a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 125 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Friday afternoon.
The NHC said further slow weakening is possible before landfall, but stressed the storm would still come ashore as a dangerous hurricane.
It projected Rita would continue moving northwestward at nearly 10 mph for the next 24 hours, which would put the core of the storm over the coasts of southwestern Louisiana and upper Texas early Saturday.
At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), the center of the storm was located about 190 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas, and about 175 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Texas.
All of the major weather models show Rita hitting the Gulf Coast near the Texas-Louisiana border.
