The Leonids meteor shower is already underway. The shower peaks Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. 20 meteors per hour are likely through the peak, which makes it more active than the recent Taurid shower.

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The meteors radiate from the Leo constellation in the northeastern part of the sky. The radiant point will be highest in the sky after midnight. This year will feature great viewing conditions as the moon (nearly at first quarter) sets before midnight. But, the weather will throw us more than a few curveballs.

A serious storm will be impacting the country with heavy rain and even some snow Tuesday night. Read the details on the storm here.

Again don't wait until Tuesday night to look for the meteors! The peak of the Leonids is not as important this year as it has been in years past when the shower is very active. Look tonight for some!

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History of the LeonidsThe Leonids have an amazing history. The parent comet (55P/Tempel-Tuttle) makes fairly frequent passes through the inner solar system. This lays out fresh debris in the path of the Earth’s orbit every 33 years.

This shower has turned into a raging meteor storm in the past. In fact, you could stay that the Leonids have produced the most impressive shows in recorded history. The years of enhanced activity have been pretty well calculated in advance. But, the bad news is that a “storm” is not expected with the 2015 Leonids.

It is not necessarily the fresh passage of Comet 55P/Tempel Tuttle that sets the stage for a meteor storm. But, it is the repeated passage over the same areas that leaves an extra thick cloud of debris for the Earth to pass through. Lets take a look at some of the historic meteor storm years for the Leonids.

I personally witnessed the most recent storm. It was 2001, my first year working for AccuWeather.com. I got off of work around 3AM, and headed outside to watch for meteors. I was shocked with how active it was. I observed what seemed to be several meteors at once in the sky all night log. But, the 2001 show pales in comparison to 1966 and 1833.

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In 1966, the Leonids produced one of the most impressive shows of all time. The most impressive display was across the Western U.S. Here is a quote from a space.com article about that night.

Perhaps the best views were from California and Arizona. At the Table Mountain Observatory, near Wrightwood, Calif., one resident astronomer commented that he and a colleague, " ... watched a rain of meteors, turn into a hail of meteors and finally a storm of meteors, too numerous to count by 3:50 a.m. Pacific Time. Instinctively, we sought to shield our upturned faces from imagined celestial debris."

From 6,850-foot Kitt Peak in southern Arizona, thirteen amateur astronomers were trying to guess how many could be seen by a sweep of their heads in one second. The consensus of the group was that the peak occurred at 4:54 a.m. Mountain Time, when the staggering rate of 40 per second (144,000 per hour) was reached!

The Leonids storm of 1833 was probably the the most intense meteor storm in recorded history. Here is an account of the event.