by Ray Rochelle
The Leonids were Storming in N. Calif tonight and this morning, HEAVILY from 1am to 4:30.
I drove out to a dark sight 40 MI into the mountains after midnight, to avoid the fog in the valley and the Hi thin, scattered clouds above my head, I pondered if it would be another bust as a lot of them are. Upon arrival with my friends, the clouds didn't look good for Orion and UrMaj and Saturn and Jupiter were almost covered by hi thin broken. But being a hardnose optimist I started to unload and set up my equipment when a BRILLIANT flash caused me to stand up and ask everyone what was going on with the light. With slack jaws they could only point to Leo and Orion and say, "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh all night.
This was a STORM! I have never seen this many meteors over such a long time. They just kept coming. There would be periods when the rates would drop to 15 PM,then would increase to that many per sec and more than you could count. They were still going during daylight.
We saw two that were big enough to leave trail clouds in the air for more than ten min.We watched with 10x70 Binocs. Orion and UrMaj were hit the hardest by far with Tau,Persi Cass second. But they hit all parts of the sky nothing was missed. We saw several skippers, multiples of 2 and 3 and more, again and again. We observed multiple meteors on the horizon and over the horizon.
I am very sorry you could not all have had favorable conditions, for it was a truly spectacular event.