--these "once in a century" storms now seem to be coming every few years or so.

They've not all been as devastating as Sandy, which had the unfortunate luck of hitting at just the wrong place to funnel an enormous storm surge at the shore and harbor (and the unfortunate luck to have been turned inland by an unusual low pressure system coming across the country at exactly the same time--most tropical systems this time of year are shoved out into the Atlantic by the west to east flow of the jet stream), but the weather does seem to be getting more extreme more often.