The good news is that this year the moonrise actually doesn’t occur until after sunrise, which means we will have a dark sky. You just need to try to get away from city light pollution.
As evening deepens into late night this week, and the meteor shower radiant climbs higher in the sky, more and more Perseid meteors will streak the nighttime. The meteors don’t really start to pick up steam until after midnight, and usually don’t bombard the sky most abundantly until the wee hours before dawn.
But don’t rule out early evenings either. While most of the meteors do occur after midnight, you could be fortunate to see an earthgrazer — a long, slow, colorful meteor traveling horizontally across the evening sky. Earthgrazer meteors are rare but most exciting and memorable, if you happen to spot one. Perseid earthgrazers can only appear at early to mid-evening, when the radiant point of the shower is close to the horizon.
Happy meteor hunting!