Although the Delaware coast lost sizable swaths of sandy beach, and some homes were swamped, the state largely dodged a demon named Sandy in October, as the freak storm saved its hardest punches for the New Jersey and New York coasts.

Yet the superstorm's path of destruction along the East Coast has raised new questions and concerns about climate change, extreme weather, rising seas and what may lie ahead—a "new normal"—as UD's Gerald Kauffman refers to it....