On the night of November 17 astronomers and interested observers worldwide will watch the skies for one of the most spectacular events visible from Earth: A blazing deluge of fiery meteors known as a meteor storm.

Mild meteor showers are common events, with more than a dozen occurring each year. At their peak most meteor showers result in one or two meteors per minute, interesting to watch but mostly unnoticed by non-astronomers.

Leonids 2000 Special Report

The annual Leonid shower peaks early Friday and Saturday mornings. TheMoon will be bright, but some experts say observers still should be able to seeabout 100 shooting stars an hour on the morning of Nov. 17.

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But on very rare occasions a normally mild meteor shower will suddenly turn into a fierce meteor storm, a fiery rain of dozens of meteors per minute -- more than 1000 per hour. One such display over the United States in November 1833 was so furious that many feared the sky was on fire and that it was the end of the world. It is that kind of display that may occur again this year on the night of November 17.

The cause of this year’s possible meteor storm is Comet Tempel-Tuttle, a comet with an Earth-crossing orbit that returns every 33 years. Over the years Tempel-Tuttle has left behind a debris trail over the entire course of its orbit, and every year on November 17 Earth crosses through the debris trail, resulting in the normally mild Leonids meteor shower.

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But every 33 years the comet and Earth pass near each other, and in those years the debris trail can be particularly heavy, resulting in a furious meteor storm.

It was just such a Leonids meteor storm that terrified millions of people in 1833, and another heavy storm appeared right on schedule in 1866. But for some reason it failed to materialize in 1899 or 1933, and astronomers concluded that perhaps 1833 and 1866 were isolated events.

Then in 1966 the Leonids storm was back in full force, putting on a furious display that at one point rained down at 40,000 meteors per hour, more than 10 per second.

But astronomers concluded that more was yet to come, and new astrophysical models have predicted a true meteor storm this year. Though competing predictions disagree on the time and place, several teams of astronomers who have modeled the comet debris trail do agree that sometime during the night of November 17 -- perhaps more than once, and in more than one place -- a blazing display will break out, lighting up the sky as few living humans have ever seen it.