On the other hand, Todd, if you had been planning a flight that was longer
than the quick 10-minute hop, would you have continued once you popped-up
and saw the extent of the haze? It sounded to me like the only reason
you continued was because you knew you were just going next door.

I'm not current, and plan on going up with my instructor to get some
hood time, as soon as my plane is out of annual, before I take it home.
If I was going to SAC or further... hmmmm.... I think I may have
turned around. Not being able to see Pilot hill is one thing, but not
being able to see the Sacramento landscape is another. If I were
current, and could make an IFR request to get to my destination...
hmmm... maybe. But I would have done much more research on the
weather, than I did, before making the trip.

There's a good article in AOPA's flight training magazine this month
about a fellow that got caught in some nasty weather/ice. It's worth
a read.

I'll check it out... Thanks!

I remember one flight back to the home airport from a local practice
area. I climbed to 1,500', but the haze was getting thicker. It was
really difficult to tell where the haze stopped and the clouds began.
I estimated that at 1,500' I still had 3-5 miles visibility, but decided
to descent to 1,000' where I had P6SM (after all, it was only 5 minutes
to the airport).

Yeah... haze is one thing, when it's just a matter of stability in the
atmosphere and simply a bad air day, but when there's haze and a nasty
system looming behind it, I would really want to know what I was up
against and be prepared before I ventured too far away from known
satisfactory conditions.

Todd