"The thing that struck me, and struck most people, was really the sheer size of this storm. I mean you had a storm that was literally a thousand miles, end to end, north to south," Dr. Phil Klotzbach said.
"We really haven't had a very significant land falling hurricane impacting the east coast in quite a while, especially the northeast," he added.
One unusual thing about the storm was how it moved northeast and cut quickly west toward New Jersey on Monday.
"It's definitely one of the strongest storms to impact the northeast in a long time," Klotzbach said. "The only storm with a similar central pressure to this storm, which is kind of how we usually rate these things, was the 1938 storm."
The 1938 hurricane killed nearly 600 people around the New England area.
"This is probably a 1 in 30, one in 40 year event," Klotzbach said.
(KUSA-TV © 2012 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)