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1966 Leonids: James W. Young
James W. Young was then an assistant resident astronomer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Table Mountain Observatory in 1966. Table Mountain Observatory is located some 45 miles northeast of Los Angeles, at an elevation of 7500 feet. He related the following account to me in November 1996--
The 1966 Leonid Meteor Shower was observed ... on the morning of November 17 starting at 2:30 AM through heavy clouds. By 3:30 AM, the clouds had completely cleared while the intensity of the shower continued to grow.
Around 4:45 AM the shower seemed to peak with the sky filled with meteor trails everywhere! The estimated peak of 50/second lasted for about 10 minutes. During the event, as observed by the five members present, we photographed over 1000 meteor trails, including a dozen fireballs, the brightest one being -12 magnitude! A total of 22 fireballs were seen by the group. During the peak, everyone felt like we needed hard-hats, as the intensity was so great when we blinked our eyes open (instead of closed), the sky was full of streaks everywhere!
Most of the lower areas in southern California were fogged in at the time, and only a few reports from local truckers were reported along with ours in California.
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