On previous Franklin Facts, I've mentioned that we classify tornadoes on the Fujita scale and hurricanes on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Recently, a University of Maine professor introduced an intensity scale for East coast winter storms.

This new classification scheme assigns two numbers to a storm: the first measures how strong the storm is, based on air pressure, with a rating of 1 being least severe and 5 most. The second number measures how fast the storm is moving - slow movers have the greatest potential to dump lots of snow, and they get the highest rating of 5. So a storm ranked 5.5 would be the strongest and slowest moving, with the most snow potential.

Honestly, I don't know if this new scale will catch on. A decade ago, two University of Virginia researchers proposed a nor'easter scale based on the strength of the storm's waves, but that scale never got much use. But just for reference, the Blizzard of January 1996, the biggest snowstorm on record around here, was rated 3.4 at its peak intensity, indicating a moderately strong storm that lasted a long time.