I stand corrected. I was using wind gust figures in my initial post and you are quite right.
Sandy was literally ripped apart by that cold front. Watched a live map showing real time wind gusts along the east coast just as Sandy was landing. Gusts were up to 79 MPH. Just hurricane strength gusts. No sustained hurricane force winds. Basically the cold front sucked Sandy right in and ate it up. So the power of the cold front actually weakened Sandy’s punch. It made the cold front more powerful, but not by much. Cold air has a higher density. This means that this winter could be very bad in the area. Imagine winter storms so powerful they can eat up a Cat 1 Hurricane and not even burp.