Are the Perseids meteor shower the best in recent years?

[flatmaster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids

Eyes on the sky tonight.

 

[ideasrule]

If you want to help out science: http://www.imo.net/visual

 

[Sorry!]

Well right now is supposed to be the peak of the shower. Walking home from my girlfriends about an hour ago i see one. Get home I see one. 30 seconds later I see another one. Thoroughly impressed by the last one it was visible for a VERY long time like 30 seconds I could still see it's trail and even make out the colours in it with my bare eyes... and the first and last one were quite long compared to others I've seen. That last one though I wish I had a camera with me :( I would go back out to see some more but I'm in my bed now too lazy :P

 

[ideasrule]

Well right now is supposed to be the peak of the shower. Walking home from my girlfriends about an hour ago i see one. Get home I see one. 30 seconds later I see another one. Thoroughly impressed by the last one it was visible for a VERY long time like 30 seconds I could still see it's trail and even make out the colours in it with my bare eyes... and the first and last one were quite long compared to others I've seen. That last one though I wish I had a camera with me :( I would go back out to see some more but I'm in my bed now too lazy :P

I saw about 16 after spending 30 minutes outdoors, but I didn't see any long trails like you did. It's also almost dawn now, so oh well.

 

[George Jones]

I was outside for about 30 minutes, and I saw just one, but my view was obstructed by buildings and trees, polluted by streetlights, and, for much of the time, I was using my binos to look at other things.

Best I've ever seen: the 2001 Leonids storm. See, for example,

http://spaceweather.com/meteors/gallery_18nov01.html.

 

[Count Iblis]

I only saw 4, two very bright ones. The two bright ones came almost simultaneously. It was a bit clouded where I am and the moon was shining quite bright in the sky. It looks like daytime if you're outside even if the Moon is just half full. You can see everything around you.

The best I ever saw was some meteor storm somewhere in the late 1990s in the fall. It was predicted to happen on some date and I decided to go looking one day in advance, because of the weather and because the predictions were not always accurate.

I saw many extremely bright meteors, the trails of the meteors were visible for one or two minutes with the naked eye and much longer with binos.

 

[Nabeshin]

I only managed to catch two in about 40 minutes of casual observing, neither of which were very impressive. My skies were only mag 4.1 though, so I guess this kind of thing is to be expected.

 

[Andre]

Best I've ever seen: the 2001 Leonids storm. See, for example,

The leonids are arriving again.

http://www.arm.ac.uk/press/2009/Leonids091113_pr.html