Quadrantids Meteor Shower Peak Coming Up for Oregon, Washington, Coast Beaches

Published 01/01/25 at 5:35 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Depoe Bay, Oregon) – Friday morning may see something special in the skies as the Quadrantids meteor showers reach their peak during the mid day, perhaps offering as much as 100 meteors per hour. However, experts are saying hit the outdoors just before dawn that morning and you could see some of the best activity of the year, even if it is just shy of the actual peak hours. (Above: Catching the pre-dawn skies at Depoe Bay's Cape Foulweather can be astounding, even if there are no meteors. Oregon Coast Beach Connection photo)

Right now, the weather does not look like it will cooperate wherever you are in Oregon or Washington, but if any clear conditions suddenly break out (as they have lately), you could get a few magnificent streaks – especially in areas like the Washington coast or Oregon coast where there's little light pollution.

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While weather wasn't forecast to cooperate in the early hours of December 31, it did eventually. Significant clearing happened from Portland down through at least Pacific City as a hint of aurora borealis was set to pop up. One reader in Pacific City caught this photo of faint northern lights in the north Oregon coast town.

The Quadrantids are a different kind of meteor peak, however. The absolute highest activity happens only within a few hours, although they are viewable about a week on either side of the peak day – January 3.

Manzanita - Oregon Coast Beach Connection

Stargazers in the Pacific Northwest and its beaches will be lucky this year, however, as the Quadrantids coincide near a new moon, which brings mostly dark skies.

Jim Todd, planetarium manager with Portland's OMSI, told Oregon Coast Beach Connection the Quadrantids were named for the former constellation Quadrans Muralis (Murals Quadrant), which once occupied the area of northern Bootes.

“It is thought that this shower is related to the recently discovered asteroid 2003 EH1,” Todd said. “This object is most likely an extinct comet nucleus that appears to be the remnant of a larger object that broke up about 500 years ago.”

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Todd suggests to dress warmly and get as wide a view of the sky as possible.

“You may not see any meteors for some time, but be patient as they often move very fast and are gone before you can turn your eyes on them,” Todd said.

The reason the peak is such a small set of hours is because the debris field is so narrow. When the Earth passes through the thickest part it doesn't take very long.

The meteor showers actually begin in December and go to about January 16, so you could still get lucky and see a few those bright, cosmic morsels in and around areas like Oregon City, Medford, Brookings, Tacoma, Seaview or Newport.

There's another very unusual aspect to the Quadrantrids: some frequencies of radio signals on Earth can briefly bounce off them and create interesting radio bursts.

Bandon, photo Manuela Durson - see Manuela Durson Fine Arts

According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS), while meteors do not emit radio waves, they can act as mirrors and reflect them – signals coming from transmitters too far away to normally hear.

If you have a radio you can fine tune, this could be a trippy activity. This is especially true if you're out on either of the coastlines in your car, playing with the radio as you watch the surf.

Above Cannon Beach - Oregon Coast Beach Connection

“This is called forward scatter, opposed to backscatter where the transmitter and receiver are at the same place (radar),” the AMS said. “For practical reasons the frequency range 50 – 150 MHz (wavelength 6 m – 2 m) is used. This includes amongst others the FM band and TV transmitters which haven’t switched yet to digital. Most reflections are short (less than a second), but brighter meteors can cause reflections lasting minutes.”

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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