Here's a summary for the Leonids Nov 17 1998, Tuesday AM.
    I had some reasonable (by Leonid standards) views last night from 
    the lake area 1/4 mile S of my apartment (ZLM 5.5). There was a generous 
    supply of high clouds, however there were some mostly clear periods between
    2-3am. While I didn't count meteors, I did see 3 or so in a minute once.
    Many were bright. I saw two that lit up the sky like a distant lightning
    flash. The first one in the east was just outside my visual field, but
    when I glanced over to it I was amazed to see the glowing train. It looked
    like a regular zero magnitude meteor (even after having to shine through
    clouds) in suspended animation, very strange. I saw one zero mag or so
    meteor within 8 degrees to the south of the radiant, short green train.

           A few meteors around 5 am were visible right through clouds so
    opaque that only 1-2 stars were visible in the whole sky.

           By Wed AM, there were perhaps 15 meteors per hour under very
    good observing conditions. They were much fainter, only being of
    "normal" brightness. I looked from 3-4am.

           Apparently, the peak number of meteors came about 15 hours before 
    comet orbit plane crossing, thus being about 04UT on Nov 17. On top 
    of that, the proportion of bright meteors seems to have been greater 
    before the peak than after.