Abstract: This work in progress paper discusses analytically characterizing nonlinear recovery behavior through the context of the derecho windstorm that struck the mid-Atlantic United States in the summer of 2012. The focus is on the recovery efforts of the Appalachian Power Company, and the discussion includes a look at the need for communicating the progress of such recovery efforts to the public. Publicly available recovery data is analyzed and compared with respect to the relative behaviors exhibited by two different nonlinear recovery processes, and some of the implications for understanding the efficiency of different disaster recovery operations are discussed.