Look up!

You don't necessarily need to take offense if, over the next several days, someone tells you to take a shower.

They might just mean a meteor shower!

Skywatchers are on alert, and if it's not too cloudy or stormy, they will have a great opportunity to see wild things above - even more interesting than when that couple down the street has another of their tiffs on the balcony.

They're called the Eta Aquariids, but unlike you and I, they don't need two eyes. Call them "Aquarids." They're peaking today and will show about 10 or 20 meteors an hour.  The show ends on May 28, and to be honest, it's much brighter in the Southern Hemisphere, but we'll make do with what we get up here.

These Eta Aquarid meteors, I wanna tell you, they move faster than that goof you saw on the Beltway the other day. They're going about 148,000 mph (66 km/s) from space into Earth's atmosphere. What we see are glowing "trains," which are bits of incandescent debris the meteor leaves behind it its wake. The train might glow for as long as two minutes, and there are usually 30 Eta Aquarid meteors on display every hour at the peak.

Our local weather is calling for partly cloudy skies and showers these nights, but isn't that the all-purpose weather forecast around here: "Partly cloudy, chance of rain"?

Enjoy the showers, take an umbrella, see a free show!