"Anyone else see the weird cloud formation next to Mt. Rainier today?"
I saw the layered standing lenticular clouds over Rainier today. It is caused when moist air blows over the mountain, gets pushed up and thus cooled. The moisture condenses into a cloud. Once the air gets over the peak and goes back down the other side, the air warms up and the water re-evaporates. The cloud appears to hover motionless over the summit, but in fact the wind must blow at least 60 mph for the cloud to form.
The old Indian saying is that whenever Tahoma (Rainier) wears a hat, it will rain in two days. I believe it.
Downwind of the cap cloud, the lenticular or wave clouds sometimes extend well over eastern Washington state, with a successively smaller cloud at each crest in the airflow. We can occasionally see clouds from different Cascade peaks simultaneously, at different altitudes and directions. Rattlesnake mountain, at 3,500 feet, frequently adds its own lower-altitude wave and rotor clouds.
That's interesting because the weather forcast is for rain on Tuesday. Did you see the article in the paper last week about Rainier specifically that the glacier on Rainier is equal to 1 cubic mile? That's a lot of flow to melt if it happens.
Being a lifetime resident I have heard of that before and yes, it generally does rain, but this cloud formation was not directly over Mt. Rainier, at least not when I saw it The clouds are interesting though and pretty.