Leonids Fell Like Rain in 1966

The Leonid meteor shower returns every November, and its peak night this year is November 16 to 17. Most years it is modest. In 1966 it turned into a meteor storm: thousands of meteors per minute fell through Earth’s atmosphere during a period of about 15 minutes. There were so many that they appeared to fall like rain.

The Leonids come from comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which circles the Sun once every 33 years. Its dust hits the atmosphere at about 71 km per second, fast enough to glow as bright streaks.