What The Meteor Shower Added

Not only to give Clark kryptonite infected villains to fight but guilt over people's deaths like Lana's parents and his ship arriving on Earth without being seen unless you did some Roswell thing.

In other versions of Superman kryptonite meteorites would fall to Earth occasionally everywhere.

With him arriving on Earth in 1989 they had to have something for his ship to land undetected like arriving in a meteor shower or the ship having a cloaking device.