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(meteorobs) Leonid observations

Hi all;

I got out Saturday night in N. Virginia where the overnight temps were 18
deg F but thankfully no wind.  High cirrus cleared off about midnight with
lm of 6.0 till twilight.

The Leonid show was awesome.  Saw a lot of bright fireballs in the negative
magnitude range.  Most spectacular were two that flared to minus 4 and left
long trains. One lasted 60 seconds, the second train was five minutes
visually and ten minutes in binoculars.  There seemed to be a preponderance
of Leonids that flared up at the end of thier flight (no sounds heard
however).  As Norman noticed in Fla, we also did not see any faint meteors
during the first two hours of the watch and the average magnitude of the
leonids for the night was +1.8, later the faint meteors picked up and the
fireballs tailed off. We had three observers awake "most" of the night and
we all saw greenish-white Leonids and only one orange. George... could that
southwestern desert dust in the atmosphere being coloring your meteors
differently or are different parts of the stream (observed from different
time zones ) containing different meteoroid composition?

Another question that we tossed around under the skies:  We all noticed
that the Leonids we observed during the first hour of the watch when the
radiant was VERY low seemed to run low in elevation angle and parallel to
the horizon, nothing was seen to cross overhead near the zenith, none of
the meteors were observed to rise above 30 degrees!  I would have thought
the distribution to be isotropic and put it down to statistics.  Did anyone
else note this behavior or did I forget to read a chapter in my IMO
handbook explaining this phenomena?

Observations from Bluemont, Va    NOVAC Savage Farm Site
lm=6.0 average,   7 Taurids seen during watch, tape recorder, F=1.0
Ave LEO mag = 1.8,   Ave SPO mag = 3.5

5:30-6:30 UT      13 LEO,    9 SPO       Teff=1.0 hr
6:30-7:30 UT      19 LEO,    9 SPO       Teff=1.0 hr
7:40-8:40 UT      15 LEO,    7 SPO       Teff=1.0 hr
8:40-9:40 UT      29 LEO,  11 SPO       Teff=1.0 hr
9:50-10:40 UT    21 LEO,    9 SPO       Teff=50 min