When most Americans hear the word "cyclone," they think about hurricanes. While this is not an incorrect thought—hurricanes are cyclonic storms which can be devastating in certain parts of the United States—there is another domestic type of storm which is just as ubiquitous. Extratropical cyclones (also known as "nor'easters") hit the American northeast every winter, usually referred to by another name ("blizzard," "winter storm," etc.).

These storms are just as underrepresented in the world of weather research as they are by the public. Unlike hurricanes, there does not exist a consensus on what makes an extratropical storm dangerous. Nor is there a robust scale to predict the damage of a nor'easter. Hurricanes, of course, have many including the well-know Saffir-Simpson scale and the Kuykendall scale, which relates storm surge and damage.

This project aimed to fix that, developing an understanding of the physical and human forces behind nor'easter impact and ultimately laying the groundwork for the development of a comprehensive scale that can be used to predict financial loss and inform emergency response plans.

The research further strove to identify the areas most vulnerable to damage from extratropical winter storms and discover how storms are changing over time due to both climatic and demographic changes.