(AP) - Waves of fireballs brightened the skies like lightning Wednesday night over the sands of Arabia as the much-heralded Leonid meteor shower swelled into the heaviest storm of shooting stars in 33 years. Around the world, astronomers and amateur stargazers stared upward from dark fields, beaches and mountaintops. The storm, which could be the most intense for decades to come, was probably the most studied in history. "It looks like the storm has come and gone," said NASA aerospace engineer Jeff Anderson at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "It hit us real quick - and dropped real quick." The annual shower reached a height of intensity, as forecast, about 9 p.m. ET, raining down a storm of shooting stars at a rate of about 1,700 per hour.