(meteorobs) IMO 2009 Calendar predicts Leonids storm

[Daniel Fischer]

Catchy headline, eh? But it's true: The 2009 Meteor Shower Calendar
by the International Meteor Organization - not online yet but in my
snail mail today - talks in its introduction about "the Leonids,
which could yield ZHRs in the 100+ category, maybe (if we are very
fortunate) bordering on near-storm levels again!" And on page 20 we
learn about "the chance of a possible meteor storm" around 21:45-50 UTC
on 17 Nov. 2009, which would be best seen - like in 2001 - in East
Asia. Unfortunately the Shower Calendar doesn't provide any detailled
references, so ADS and Google had to help and yielded the following hits:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005A%26A...439..761V
 - "The next storm is expected in 2034." (Can't access full paper from home)
http://feraj.narod.ru/Radiants/Predictions/1901-2100eng/Leo2001-2010eng.html
 - ZHRs up to 65 only in 2009 (but 115 this year)
http://lists.meteorobs.org/pipermail/meteorobs/2005-March/002088.html
 - ZHRs up to 241 in 2009 (and, gasp, 435 this year)
http://lists.meteorobs.org/pipermail/meteorobs/2005-February/002056.html
 - ZHR of 573 in 2009
http://www.arm.ac.uk/leonid
 - nothing whatsoever for the Leonids beyond 2007

Unless it's stated in the A&A paper (but not in its abstract) I thus
couldn't find any prediction of "a rate perhaps in the 1000-1500 range
briefly" that the Shower Calendar claims to exist: Where did that figure
come from - and is there any consensus in the community about the 'likely'
Leo 2009 experience and the probabilities of outbursts up to storm level
(if you call a EZHR of 1000 that)? It would be especially important to
know whether those models that predict large outbursts successfully
postdict the Leonid storms of the past 10 years. And - important! -
whether they are prone to false positives in this regard or not.

These questions aren't purely academic: 2009 is the International Year
of Astronomy, chosen for calendrical reasons (400 years of Galileo's
first telescopic observations, also 400 years of Kepler's Astronomia
Nova) but pretty devoid of remarkable sky sights for the public at
large. The popular Perseids are lost to the last quarter Moon, the
Quadrantids are awfully short, the Geminids are cold in many places:
Should we or shouldn't we talk about the (potential of a (major))
Leonid outburst - in moonless skies! - in 2009 or not? 


Answers welcome by

Daniel Fischer
(actually on the board of the German Nat'l Committee for the IYA)