Even after downgrade to tropical storm strength, Hugo really tore up Charlotte NC, many miles inland. I helped cleanup efforts there, and the term “natural disaster” doesn’t come close to what I saw.
In rural farm areas, you only saw a few blown out barns, but once you hit the more densely populated areas, only 10% of the roads were passable because of huge amounts of storm debris, and power lines were down in multiple places on each city block due to fallen old growth trees.
Not really life threatening, but a total pain in the backside for residents who had to wait weeks for power to get back to their house, and slightly less than that for all the roads to be open again.
The areas Sandy will cover are several times more densely populated than Charlotte.
Hugo was still classified as a hurricane as far as Greensboro in my recollection. It blew the roof off the house I was living in ther at the time. Horizontal wimdblown rain that was too warm, like a dog panting on you.