Personal Experience with Haze?

Question

You can tell me about your personal experience with haze(live story) . Do take note that I mean "personal" experience and not stories of others' encounters with haze. I am referring to haze due to bad weather/climate. The best answer will be voted by me !!!

Answer 1

Flying back after dropping off mail aboard an aircraft carrier at sea, we flew VFR (visual flight rules) to NAS North Island (near San Diego) to return home. The weather was predicted CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited) all the way.

We called into North Island tower for landing instructions. They gave us the landing OK; we made our normal VFR approach to the runway. Looking down, we could see the runway just fine through a bit of haze. This would be a piece of cake.

Everything was fine until the last fifty feet or so of our descent. Just before touchdown, we entered into what seemed like the inside of a filled bottle of white milk. Everything around us disappeared and became milky white. We had no clue at that point where the runway was, but we knew we were close to the ground...a matter of seconds away from touchdown, but we had no idea where we would be touching down.

I gunned the power, lifted the gear and assumed an IFR (instrument flight rules) climb out straight ahead. In seconds, we broke out of the milk bottle and found the CAVU conditions our North Island weather guessers had predicted. Looking down, the milky white fog we had been in once again looked like a layer of see through haze.

We told the tower why we'd taken a waveoff, the IFR climb out. They had no clue that the visibility was essentially zero below fifty feet. You see, the tower was tall enough that the controllers were looking down on the haze layer from their lofty position. And from that perspective the layer was see through; it was transparent.

After the waveoff, we requested and made an IFR landing without incident. But I headed for the North Island operations department to lodge a formal complaint. Why would their weather guessers and the tower controllers tell us everything was CAVU when in fact, below fifty feet, we had zero visibility and instrument conditions?

Answer 2

I have had the opportunity to work in the state of Utah, which would probably not be the place you would expect to meet up with huge amounts of air pollutions. But they deal with a somewhat unique atmospheric phenomena called inversions. They are caused in the valleys when a layer of warm air forms above the cool air in the valley floor. The cold air is trapped along with all pollution that is produce during the length of the inversion.

Now when I was there the inversion had been going on for close to two weeks. School kids had to stay inside from recess because it was a red air day. I was sick and tired of the dark grayish guck which was everywhere, dropping visibility. So I decided to visit a few of my friends in Salt Lake City.

That was the wrong choice. As I came over the point of the mountain it the valley air was this dirty brown color. But I had already said that I would come so I continue, but the you could barely see four or five cars in front of you on the freeway.

When I finally got the University of Utah, I asked my friend how they could stand living in this. And she explained that they didn't have it as bad as a little valley north of them called Cashe Valley. Some winters the inversions get so bad that it is barely habitable, but it wasn't caused by cars, it was caused by agriculture.

Curious, I ended up going up to the town of Logan in Cashe Valley. And looking at their data a realized that on some days they have air over 4 times worse then downtown LA, but it is not caused by cars. In fact some of the worst inversions ever recorded was before the area was settled. For me that was an interesting side the creation of both haze and smog.

Answer 3

that's scary the first guy.