The aim of this paper is to study the associated primes of powers of squarefree monomial ideals. Hypergraphs and squarefree monomial ideals are strongly connected. The cover ideal $J(H)$ of a hypergraph $H$ is the intersection of the primes corresponding to the edges of $H$. We define the $shadow$ of $H$ as a certain set of smaller hypergraphs related to $H$. We then describe how the shadows of $H$ preserve information about the associated primes of the powers of $J(H)$. Some implications to the persistence property are studied.