MileCheck / Mountains / The Olympics / Best time
The Olympics · seasons

Best time of year to see the Olympics

Which months and which hours, from Seattle.

The app

Mountain Visibility

Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Denali, The Olympics and Mount Angeles. Visible now or not, the three-day forecast, and the sunrise and sunset light. $1.99, one time.

Get the app, $1.99 Android is in testing. Email mountains@milecheckapp.com to be a tester.

From Seattle the range is at its most reliable July through September, the same season as Rainier. The skyline you see is the eastern front, Mount Constance and The Brothers, about 38 miles from downtown. Mount Olympus is 27 miles farther back and hidden behind that front from every town on the Sound. Constance is 7,756 ft, nearly 7,000 lower than Rainier, so a cloud deck that still shows Rainier can hide the Olympics.

The geometry runs backwards from Rainier's: the range is west of the city, not south, so sunrise lights the east-facing slope you are looking at, with the sun behind you. Sunset silhouettes the range instead, with the sun going down behind or through it.

Kitsap, across the Sound, is the closest of the region pages at about 27 miles. Bremerton and the ferry crossings see the range on many days when the Seattle waterfront is still under a morning lid.

Right now

Right now · from Seattle · Pacific time
…

Reading the airports along the sightline.

Three-day forecast and the light

The clear windows in the next three days, and the sunrise and sunset light on the summit, are in the app. $1.99, one time.

Get the app, $1.99

By region

Mountain Visibility

Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Denali, The Olympics, Mount Angeles in one app. Shows whether the mountain is visible from where you are, the clear windows in the next three days, and the viewpoints. Made for photographers and anyone driving to a viewpoint. $1.99, one time. No account, no ads.

Get the app, $1.99 Android is in testing. Email mountains@milecheckapp.com to be a tester.

Questions

How do we know if the Olympics are visible?

We read the cloud ceilings at the airports between Seattle and the summit, the cloud layers at the summit from the MET Norway model, and whether that cloud sits below 7,756 ft. No crowd reports.

Why only three days?

Cloud forecasts are not reliable past about three days, so the forecast stops there.

Why does the Eastside get a different answer than Seattle?

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.

What it can get wrong

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.

Seasonal notes are general patterns, not a forecast. The live panel is the forecast.