After one more relatively mild day, a ridge of high pressure will strengthen into the Great Basin warming temperatures from the upper 80s on Wednesday into the low 90s on Thursday and the mid to upper-90s by the weekend. Skies will remain clear throughout, with light morning winds giving way to afternoon breezes out of the west in the 10-15 mpg range.

Yesterday I mentioned the Perseid Meteor Shower is one of the best showers, year in and year out. And it always appears the same time of year, peaking around August 11-12. Why is that? Meteor showers occur when the earth flies through the “dusty” orbital path of a comet, in this case the Swift-Tuttle comet. Since the orbital paths of both the comet and the earth are fixed, the intersection of our orbit and the comet’s always occurs at the same time of the year. Although there are some other showers that appear at other times of the year that can be pretty impressive (the Leonid, Lyrids and Geminids to name a few), the Perseid is always good for at least 50-150 meteors per hour, and at times has nearly ten times that many.