You may want to make plans to stay up late this weekend or set your alarm to wake up very early.  The Perseid Meteor Shower will peak this weekend.  It is what many consider to be the best meteor shower of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

  • The meteors will be best seen from after midnight through just before dawn
  • Up to 60 or 70 meteors per hour could be seen late Saturday and Sunday nights
  • Clouds could obstruct the best views in parts of North Carolina this weekend

Meteors could be visible both Saturday and Sunday nights as early as 10pm.  However, the best time to see the meteors will come from after midnight through just before dawn in the morning.  Up to 60 to 70 meteors per hour could be visible.

To see the meteors, you will want to be in complete darkness away from city lights and look toward the northeast.  

Unfortunately, weather conditions may not fully cooperate for seeing the shooting stars here in North Carolina.   Scattered afternoon and evening storms are likely across the state Saturday and Sunday.  While many of the storms will be coming to an end by night, leftover clouds could obstruct the best views at times.  However, some breaks in the clouds are possible.

The Perseid Meteor shower is created by particles, or space debris, from the Swift-Tuttle comet.  Every year around mid-August Earth passes through the debris tail of the comet.  The particles from the comet collide with our atmosphere and disintegrate creating the shooting stars.