I've never been in a big meteor shower before. I may not be able to say the same thing next week.

The Leonid Shower is coming to town, and by all accounts it should be huge. It's going to reach its peak shortly after midnight on Saturday night (Sunday morning) the 17th/18th.

Sadly, I'll be spending Saturday afternoon leaving one of the best places to see the event, Lake Tahoe. At that altitude, there should be roughly 2700 visible streaks per hour (or one every 1.3 seconds) at its peak at 2am. The good news is that I'll be at Crystal's birthday in Vallejo, so we won't be in the thick of light pollution, and if we're feeling motivated we can still take a short drive and get away from most of the background light and still get around 2200 streaks per hour (compared to about 350/hr in urban areas (which is still nothing to sneeze at)).

Want to find out when and where is the best time to watch? Grab your latitude and longitude (or pick the biggest city close to you) and take it to NASA's Leonid Flux Estimator. It'll tell you the best time to watch, and give you a rough idea of what you can expect.

This should be quite incredible. Just the thing for a birthday party.