u/indieaz

Just wanted to give everyone a little hope. These are some webcams as of this morning.

1 - Timberline @ MT Hood

2 - Hoodoo ski area is bare, but you can see three fingered jack in the distance with a fresh coat

3 - Mt Bachlor with a very light dusting. I imagine the sisters all got some snow above 6k feet.

Warm golden sun to wrap up August and wow did things change up the next day. Looking so bare, thankful for this early season storm.

Last Day of August was a blue bird day around Mount Adams. Weather couldn't be any better. Autumn color was starting to show up in the meadows and hill sides. Frogs everywhere near the streams and lakes.

Made it up to Killen Creek Meadows along the PCT and did various side quests to lakes and waterfalls. One of my favorite areas.

Pulled off to stretch legs, found a surprise waterfall.

Mede a similar post in r/oregon, but figured I'd throw a full PNW view here. This is a proprietary forecast i've built (and runs on severs in my garage for now) and been using for a while in my photography pursuits. I have not released to the wild and shared publicly, but with so many posts about perseids and where to view I thought a screenshot of my forecast may be useful for everyone.

This forecast incorporate the Bortle score (light pollution), smoke, clouds, humidity throughout the atmosphere and numerous other variables to build this map of night sky viewing conditions.

This is a snapshot of the forecast for tonight at midnight. Things do not change that much hour to hour from 11pm to 3am tonight, so midnight is a good reference point.

RIght now Washington isn't looking great. Bear in mind, forecasts aren't perfect, and evne some of the orange/red areas could have periods where viewing is better, but generally clouds and smoke are really killing things tonight. Your best bet is the olympics, or try to get down near St Helens. Things looking much better in Oregon. For those in BC you won't have to go far it looks like to get some great conditions tonight.

Idaho...I am sorry, but at least those in Boise can head to Bois Nat'l Forest where conditions look like they might be reasonable.

I've been building a suite of forecast models specifically for outdoor activities, including star gazing/night photography. I have not released it into the wild, but i've seen so many questions on reddit asking for help with where to look I figured I'd throw this out there.

This is my forecast model for tonight at midnight. It is taking into account base light pollution data (Bortle score) and a host of other atmospheric variables from numerous weather models to build a map of sky viewing conditions (Yes, including where wildfire smoke will be). The legend is in the top right of the screenshot.

I've been using this for myself personally and validating it for a few months and consider is pretty reliable, especially the day of.

Hope this helps some folks out on deciding where to head tonight! As a photographer I wish I was going out, but I have too much going on tomorrow to suffer a sleepless night, but I'm looking forward to seeing what other photographers capture!