Which months and which hours, from Portland.
Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Denali, The Olympics and Mount Angeles. Visible now or not, the five-day forecast, and the sunrise and sunset light. $1.99, one time.
Portland's clearest months are July through September. Hood River, on the dry side of the Cascades, sees the mountain on many days when Portland is under cloud, and Government Camp sits above the valley cloud entirely.
Autumn inversions put Portland under fog with the mountain in sun above it. Winter is the mountain's quiet season from the city, with clear days coming in short cold spells after a front.
Sunset light lands on the west face, the Portland side. Sunrise from Hood River lights the north face.
Reading the airports along the sightline.
$1.99, one time. No account needed. No ads in the app.
We read the cloud ceilings at the airports between Portland and the summit, the cloud layers at the summit from the MET Norway model, and whether that cloud sits below 11,249 ft. No crowd reports.
Cloud forecasts get less reliable the further out they go. Days four and five are drawn in six-hour steps for that reason, and the forecast stops at five.
Different weather stations, different sky. The same morning can be fog in one and clear in the other, twenty miles apart. Each region page reads its own stations.
Wildfire smoke and haze can hide the mountain on a day the cloud numbers say clear. When the numbers are unsure, the page says so.
Our pick for binoculars: Vortex Diamondback HD 10x42 on Amazon
MileCheck