Which months and which hours, from Seattle.
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.
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.
Reading the airports along the sightline.
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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.
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