What's with all the fog?

It has been a rough few days for my commute.

On New Year's Eve, I decided to go into the office to get some planning work done. At departure from CRQ, SMO was reporting low overcast and low visibility, but off the west end of the airport. I knew there was a chance that I'd miss, but I thought I'd try it.

Even tho I was in good VFR on the whole flight from CRQ, I picked up an IFR just south of LAX so that I could get really close to SMO without worry. Flying over LAX, there was a low but scattered cloud cover so I figured that I *might* be able to get in. Unfortunately, on the approach vector to the east, I could see that the fog bank seemed to stop just at the 405/10 interchange; making a successful approach unlikely.

As Socal turned me to final and handed me off to SMO tower I asked them what the wx was like. Their response:

"Cirrus 4CD, SMO Tower - I can only just see the runway edge lights from the tower. We are reporting less than 1/4 mile visibility now"

Of course I missed :( I decided to hang out for a while and asked for vectors to hold to the east. Approach gave me a VFR hold over the Rose Bowl (VPLRB) and I did 7 turns, holding for about 30 minutes. While the approach guy was super helpful and kept me updated on the wx, it never did get any better and I ended up flying back to CRQ.

Today (Jan 2nd), I haven't even taken off yet because exactly the same conditions exist. As I type this (9:16am) SMO is reporting wind 040 @ 3kts, 3/4 miles visibility and overcast with indefinite ceilings at 100' and temp/dp at 09/08. I guess it is a good day to work at Starbucks in Carlsbad :)

At least I got great holding practice on Wednesday!