Attempts to catalog Atlantic hurricanes in the first half of the 19th century began as early as 1855, when Andrés Poey compiled information on just over 400 tropical cyclones from 1493 to 1855. However, Poey listed only three of the five or more hurricanes that developed in 1850. In his 1963 book, "Early American Hurricanes, 1492–1870", weather researcher David M. Ludlum discusses, in greater detail, three significant tropical cyclones that impacted the United States in 1850. Unusually, all three heavily impacted the northeastern states; Ludlum compares the season to 1954, in which three major tropical systems impacted the Eastern Seaboard. More traditional hurricane targets, such as Florida, were spared the brunt of seasonal tropical cyclone activity in 1850, while the atmosphere farther north was abnormally tropical. Newark, New Jersey, had its warmest—and one of its rainiest—summers on record at the time, owing to frequent nearby hurricanes and the influx of tropical air. Meteorological reports pertaining to the season were largely lost in a Smithsonian Institution fire in 1856, limiting what is known about hurricane activity in 1850. As the season falls outside the scope of the Atlantic hurricane database (1851 onward) and its associated reanalysis project, records are regarded as incomplete. Extant accounts of the storms in 1850 are chiefly based on private weather records and press reports, and only approximate storm tracks are known.