I have been sadly disappointed by every single meteor “shower” I’ve stayed up, or got up, to watch. The only good ones are when you are camping under the stars and just happen to see one on occasion.
You have to be far away from city lights. The perseid (correct one?) shower in August is amazing.
Saw a nice one in Alabama about 15 years ago. Very nice. We were in Mountain Brook outside Birmingham. Very upscale so I think they ordered the lights off in the region.
I am an MS junkie, and an expert. Most MSs don’t come even close to living up to the hype. But my first ever MS (the Perseids in west Texas 14 years ago) were stunning beyond all possible description. Saw them completely by accident, and didn’t even know it was an MS. This is the event, however, that turned me into an MS junkie. There were between 5 and 10 shooting stars every single minute for at least two hours. I now regularly plan vacations around MSs and that is no exagerration.
If you have some patience, and live in the right place, you can see at least one shower each and every single night for the rest of your life.
Clear Black moonless night sky, and suddenly about 9pm the meteors started zipping across the black sky, maybe a hundred a minute. Gorgeous sight!
Then about 10:30pm the northern lights appeared, and danced in the northern sky in various shades of light green, kind’a like ribbon candy, the way they were convoluted, pulsating and winding in a rhythm.
Just before our watch was ending, a small light appeared at about two o'clock to our heading. We initially thought it was a fishing boat in the area, but after about 10 minutes, we realized that it was the point of the new moon arising in the north-east, casting some light in our beautiful playground that we had enjoyed for about three hours!
A very memorable night about 33 years ago! A notch on my bucket list!
I had been also, sadly disappointed by every shower I got up to see. Except for one.
I got a hint that something special was going on by going outside around 4:30 am and spotting 3-4 meteors in about a 15 minute period. Might be worth the 10 minute ride to the country and dark skies (we live in a town of 7000).
After stepping out onto the farmer's field (I had cultivated a friendly relationship with him and had a place he advised me to park when bike riding), I noted at least one a minute. In one ten second period, I saw 3 seperate meteors. There were fireballs, splitting up meteors an a truly sureal show. Must have seen 60-75 in the hour before dawn.
That night the evening news reported how the shower had been a big disappointment. The city lights hidden most of the action.