The New York-New Jersey region is bounded by the Appalachian Mountains to the west and a complex coastline along the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The regional land use is highly varied and includes a dense urban corridor through New Jersey and New York. All of these features potentially impact storm initiation and evolution. The 50 largest storms are identified using cloud-to-ground lightning observations from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN), and detailed storm-tracking analyses of high-resolution (1-km) Hydro-NEXRAD radar fields are performed using the TITAN (Thunderstorm Identification, Tracking, Analysis, and Nowcasting) storm-tracking system to identify the climatology of storm initiation and evolution in this region. Additionally, storm simulations are performed at high resolution (1-km horizontal grid spacing) using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. We aim to develop a climatology of storm structure and evolution in this region, with emphasis on how they are linked to specific landscape features both from an atmospheric dynamics perspective and from a water and energy perspective. Sensitivity analyses on the Zilitinkevich C parameter are performed using the WRF model simulations to examine the role of land-surface fluxes (latent and sensible heat flux) on storm development.