If you live here or spend a lot of time in Western Washington, I bet you're laughing already because you know how true this is! For those of you who are unfamiliar with this corner of the world, this really IS our view of the mountain in winter. (If you think I might be exaggerating, you're right - most of the time you can't even see the top!) Mount Rainier in Western Washington, USA, rises 14,410 feet above sea level. (Topographic prominance is over 13,000 feet.) The mountain's area is over 235,600 acres. That is one BIG mountain! However, we regularly have plenty of clouds here with which to cover the whole thing. On sunny days when you can actually SEE the darned thing, people say, "Oh look! The mountain is out!" As if it actually goes somewhere else when we can't see it. The Seattle area only gets about 35 inches of precipitation a year. However, where other areas of the world get RAIN, we get mist, drizzle, sprinkles and showers. It's cloudy here 300 days out of the year. (Okay, I might be exaggerating again. It may be only 290. But look it up for yourself - you'll find I'm pretty close!) The moral of the story: Visit beautiful Western Washington between July 15 and September 15 when we have our summer. It's really quite pretty here! p.s. You can browse the Internet for "Mount Rainier" and find loads of information and photos, if you'd like to see what our mountain looks like when it's out!