What this could be is the beginning of a meteor shower. Some meteor showers follow the orbits of comets, and some seem to have no comet anymore. Once this comet is totally fragmented the earth can pass through the debris trail with no other effect than a mid-May meteor storm, but the more the debris is distributed along the orbit the less intense the storm will be.
Yup. Clube, Napier and others claim that earth has been repeatedly pounded by the larger elements within these comet trails causing various 'Dark Ages' on earth over the eons. Their excellent book 'Cosmic Winter' covers this in detail.
The comet is now behind Earth and catching up to it. The closest approach i about May 12(which allso happens to be a certain old geezers birthday, but we won't go into that...).
So, after May 12, we will be following along the comets tail.Thats when we might get some meteor activity.
It could turn out to be either a complete dud, or in fact one of the most spectacular displays ever. I imagine for every large fragment Nasa says they found, there are a million sand sized grains.