While Esther was becoming a powerful hurricane over the open Atlantic, the San Juan Weather Bureau office issued a small craft advisory for the Leeward Islands, United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Bahamas, and Bermuda.
The National Weather Service, in anticipation of a possible landfall in the Carolinas, issued a gale warning and a hurricane watch from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia on September 18 (tropical storm warnings were not issued at the time) [REF].