High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hurricane Esther was the fifth named storm and fifth hurricane of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season. A long-lived Category 4 Cape Verde-type hurricane, Esther spent its lifetime offshore, before moving up the East Coast of the United States. Esther came very close to Nantucket Island as a rapidly weakening Category 3 hurricane, then passed over Cape Cod as a tropical storm, and later came ashore in Maine while losing its tropical characteristics. Esther also made a rather unusual anticyclonic loop over the north Atlantic Ocean.