Meteors provide a great show if there are no clouds

Every year I look forward to the middle of November when the Leonid meteor shower sends hundreds of shooting stars blasting through night sky.

For the past four years, the weekend of the Leonids fell on the same weekend as my sorority's initiation. Saturday night was our Sisterhood night when we would all hang around our house and watch movies, play games and T-P our neighbors.

Two years ago, the girls in my pledge class decided we would drive out to the country and watch the Leonids.

About 15 of us packed into two small cars and headed down Highway 177 away from the city lights.

We took a right 10 miles out of town, and a couple minutes later we came to a stop on a little bridge over a stream in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. As we were peeling ourselves off of one another trying to get out of the cars a few of us saw the first shooting star.

"Oh my gosh! Did you see that?" a few of us yelled pointing to a spot in the sky where the star fizzled out of sight. "That was so cool."

It wasn't warm that November like it was this past weekend, so we grabbed a couple of blankets out of the trunks of the cars and made a pallet on the ground like we used to when we had slumber parties when we were younger.

We laid there on our backs in the middle of the bridge and for about five minutes in complete silence. We were all looking up, waiting for a star to blaze above us, each of us hoping we would be the first to notice it.

After the five minutes passed we started to wonder if the weatherman was right. He said we would probably see two or three shooting stars every minute. Probably was the key word.

After a few more minutes had passed we started to talk and our deep concentration on the sky eventually faded.

Just when we let our guard down it happened.

Right in the middle of someone telling a joke, a huge white streak shot from one side of the sky to the other. It was so bright it looked as if it had a neon green tail.

There was a small house about a mile away from where we were, and I wouldn't be surprised if they heard us screaming in pure joy.

We all sprung to our feet and continued yelling at the top of our lungs for a good minute or two. I'm not really sure if we were yelling actual words or if we were just hooting and hollering. I'm pretty sure it wasn't English.

There is no doubt in my mind though, that if a car would have driven by us at that exact moment and seen all 15 of us jumping up and down and hugging each other they would have probably called the police.

After another minute or two we calmed down, but we continued to stand in the middle of the bridge, our heads bent back looking up at the sky.

When a few of us started to shiver and complain that our necks were beginning to hurt we decided to climb back under the covers.

For the next 20 minutes, we saw a variety of stars shoot across the sky. Some were short, skinny and orange, others were long and white, but none were as amazing as the giant green-tailed one.

We laid there on the ground telling stories and hoping we would see another great star zoom over us and decided we would only stay 10 more minutes. If we didn't see any more we would head back to campus.

It was about three minutes into our 10-minute countdown when we saw another big star. Only this time it was even bigger than the green-tailed one. This one was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

It was purple and made a noise like a firecracker fizzing through the air.

Again, we jumped up and went through the whole screaming and yelling bit, only this time it lasted much longer.

Our voices were half gone when we got back to campus. All in all, we counted about 100 stars in the hour-and-a-half we were out there. Some of our sorority sisters who chose to stay behind were sorry they hadn't gone with us when they heard of our stories. Others didn't believe we had actually seen that many.

We knew we had, and we looked forward to the next year. This year I looked to the sky hoping to see a star like the one I had seen that night two years ago.

Unfortunately, all I saw were clouds.

Heather Kronmueller is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.