Meteorological History
On September 10, 1961, a tropical wave in the tropics over the central Atlantic was identified by satellite imagery as a potential area for tropical cyclone development. This wave gradually increased in organization, and developed into a tropical depression on September 11. The depression moved northwestward and began to rapidly intensify, becoming Tropical Storm Esther the next day.
Intensification within the tropical storm continued at a quick pace, and Esther reached hurricane strength early on September 12. Esther then turned westward in response to a high pressure ridge over the central Atlantic, becoming a major hurricane on September 13. For the next four days, Esther intensified more slowly as it moved west-northwestward, reaching its peak intensity of 145 mph (235 km/h) on September 18 as it approached the Eastern Seaboard.
In response to an oncoming trough, the hurricane turned northwest, then northward, threatening the New England states and gradually weakening over increasingly cooler waters. Esther brushed Nantucket Island on September 21 before performing an anticyclonic loop to the southeast, rapidly weakening to a tropical storm as it moved over the cold waters of the north Atlantic. Another trough pulled Esther to the northwest, then to the north as the storm crossed Cape Cod, and made a final landfall in southern Maine on September 26. Esther became extratropical the next day as it raced northward over Maine, and was absorbed by a larger extratropical low near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River later that day.
Read more about this topic: Hurricane Esther (1961)
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“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)