 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 pertinent 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 . 
