This weekend will provide a show you won't want to miss. The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak both Saturday night and Sunday night in the Northern Hemisphere. This year's Perseids will be particularly special. That's because they will provide the best meteor shower of 2018! Upwards of 60 to 70 meteors will be visible each hour right here in Michiana! That means you have the chance to see up to 1 shooting star every minute!
If you're lucky, you may even get to see some very bright meteors that look like fireballs shooting across the night sky! It gets even better, though. This year's Perseids will peak just hours after the moon goes through its "new" phase. In other words, just a sliver of the moon will be visible each night. Even more, the moon will set before the Perseids peak each night. This type of setup does not always happen with meteor showers, and because it is happening this way, the moon's light will not impact the night sky's darkness!
Of course, the big questions are: "When should I go outside, and will the weather cooperate?" The first question is easy. The best time to venture outdoors and watch for the Perseids is after midnight both Saturday night and Sunday night. The second question is a little tougher because accurately predicting cloud cover is not the easiest task. However, there is excellent agreement among the different forecast models that skies will be mainly, if not entirely, clear each night! Not only that, but it won't be oppressively hot or unusually chilly either night! Everything points to a perfect chance to see an incredible meteor shower. We may not see the weather cooperate this well ever again during a meteor shower's peak!
