The shower begins, gently, in mid-July when Earth enters the outskirts of a cloud of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Dust-sized meteoroids hitting the atmosphere will streak across the night sky, at first only a sprinkling, just a few each night, but the rate will build.
By August 12th when the shower peaks, sky watchers can expect to see dozens, possibly even hundreds, of meteors per hour.
This is a good year for Perseids, for two reasons, explains Bill Cooke of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. First, the Moon is new in mid-August; moonlight won't spoil the show. Second, in addition to the usual shower on August 12th, there might be an extra surge of meteors on August 11th caused by a filament of dust newly drifting across Earth's orbit.
The filament, like all the rest of the dust in the Perseid cloud, comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The difference is, the filament is relatively young. It boiled off the comet during the Civil War, in 1862. Other dust in the cloud is older (perhaps thousands of years old), more dispersed, and responsible for the month-long shower that peaks on August 12th. The filament will eventually disperse, too, but for now it retains some of its original ribbon-shape.
If predictions are correct, Earth will plow through the filament on Wednesday, August 11th at 2100 UT (5 p.m. EDT). This will produce a surge of mostly-faint meteors over Europe and Asia. Observers might see "as many as 200 meteors per hour," says Cooke, who recommends getting away from city lights to watch the flurry.
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I've been waiting for the Perseids all summer. Yes, yes, I'm an astronomy nerd.
Does anyone else plan on watching the shower this year? I'm eager to read about your experiences with it (and other showers) - it's coming in...*looks at calendar*...5 days! 
