There is a tower almost exactly 2km from my house. My ~700mW WL S3 Arctic could easily project a dot onto the tower given an avarage night. It was probably a human sized dot/oval, but at night it was visible. In the daytime, I'll bet you have a tough time seeing a typical 445 dot past 0.5km.
An aixiz lens can get the beam down to ~1.35mrad and I think I've seen talk of <1mrad with some of DrLava's correction optics. Around 1mrad ain't too bad at all even if the beam is a rectangle. Optimally, you're looking at about 1m (39" long) bar at one km. that should be fairly visible especially at night. Low Clouds are about 1.5km above sea level and most other high clouds are between 1.5km-7km above sea level.
For reference, on a clear night I can see my 5mW greenie pointing at trees at least just about 1 km away. Although green is VERY visible at night and the green pointer has ridiculous divergence. The beam (in the dark or smoke) looks like a needle piercing the air.