today's no-go decision

[azure]

I made a no-go decision today that I'd like to share because it was close, and if I had trusted the briefer I would have launched, but it would have been a bad decision. I was set to fly VFR from PHN to TVC this morning for some cyclotouring. Here were the available TAFs:

KMBS 291129Z 291212 23005KT P6SM BKN080
FM1500 26007KT P6SM SCT040 BKN070
FM1900 30007KT P6SM BKN050
FM2200 01008KT P6SM SCT050
FM0200 01006KT P6SM SKC=

KTVC 291139Z 291212 01007KT P6SM BKN025 BKN070
TEMPO 1214 SCT025
FM1400 36010KT P6SM SCT050
FM0100 00000KT P6SM SKC=

and the area forecast:

LM LWR MI LH
NRN SXNS...CIG BKN035 TOP FL200. ISOL -SHRA/-TSRA. CB TOP FL350.
13Z AGL SCT050 BKN100. 16Z AGL SCT060. OTLK...VFR.
SRN SXNS...AGL SCT-BKN060 TOP 150. BECMG 1618 AGL SCT040.
OTLK...VFR.

I was to depart at 1430Z arriving at 1600Z, so not exactly CAVU but a fairly good VFR forecast. The fly in the ointment was a very weak cold front sliding slowly down the state, but precip and MVFR weren't reflected in any of the forecasts. The briefer reported a couple of weak echoes around MOP but said that was probably all virga because there were no surface reports. When I pointed out the OVC010 at GLR, behind the front, she said that was probably just morning burnoff that wouldn't affect me. Overall it looked solidly VFR.

I wasn't convinced it was burnoff because there were no reports of MVFR anywhere ahead of the front, and because the NWS forecast discussion said that there might be some MVFR conditions briefly behind it. I decided to watch the radar and surface reports for an hour or so and see what happened. As it turned out more isolated echoes started popping up, and most importantly, everywhere the front passed, whether or not any precip was reported, a MVFR layer settled in behind. CAD, RQB, MOP, later even MBS, all developed something around 020 at least SCT-BKN, usually with a BKN-OVC layer at 040-050 so no room to squeeze between. Not being much in the mood to run scud in northern MI, I cancelled.

This is the second time in little over a month that a briefer at Lansing FSS has tried to convince me that conditions were VFR when my gut told me they probably weren't. Last time I listened to him and launched, and wound up too close to IMC for comfort. That time there was not even a front to worry about, but the forecast discussion had mentioned plenty of low level moisture around 925 MB, which is about 2500 MSL (only 1200 AGL in northern lower MI).

I am getting to where I talk to the Lansing briefers only as a formality and rely on other wx sources to decide go vs no go. There are some very good briefers there but there are others who don't seem to have much weather sense and it's hard to tell how good a briefer is the first time you talk to them. Sorry if this sounds overly harsh, but having been burned by one too many "airbrushed" briefings, I just don't trust them any more.

I guess this turned into a sort of rant... sorry about that. Anyway the main point is to consider ALL available sources of wx info, not just the "official" ones.

Liz

edited to add: shortly after I cancelled, MOP reported +RA. As we say in MI, if you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes.

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

I made a no-go decision today that I'd like to share because it was close, and if I had trusted the briefer I would have launched, but it would have been a bad decision. I was set to fly VFR from PHN to TVC this morning for some cyclotouring. Here were the available TAFs:

KMBS 291129Z 291212 23005KT P6SM BKN080
FM1500 26007KT P6SM SCT040 BKN070
FM1900 30007KT P6SM BKN050
FM2200 01008KT P6SM SCT050
FM0200 01006KT P6SM SKC=

KTVC 291139Z 291212 01007KT P6SM BKN025 BKN070
TEMPO 1214 SCT025
FM1400 36010KT P6SM SCT050
FM0100 00000KT P6SM SKC=

and the area forecast:

LM LWR MI LH
NRN SXNS...CIG BKN035 TOP FL200. ISOL -SHRA/-TSRA. CB TOP FL350.
13Z AGL SCT050 BKN100. 16Z AGL SCT060. OTLK...VFR.
SRN SXNS...AGL SCT-BKN060 TOP 150. BECMG 1618 AGL SCT040.
OTLK...VFR.

I was to depart at 1430Z arriving at 1600Z, so not exactly CAVU but a fairly good VFR forecast. The fly in the ointment was a very weak cold front sliding slowly down the state, but precip and MVFR weren't reflected in any of the forecasts. The briefer reported a couple of weak echoes around MOP but said that was probably all virga because there were no surface reports. When I pointed out the OVC010 at GLR, behind the front, she said that was probably just morning burnoff that wouldn't affect me. Overall it looked solidly VFR.

I wasn't convinced it was burnoff because there were no reports of MVFR anywhere ahead of the front, and because the NWS forecast discussion said that there might be some MVFR conditions briefly behind it. I decided to watch the radar and surface reports for an hour or so and see what happened. As it turned out more isolated echoes started popping up, and most importantly, everywhere the front passed, whether or not any precip was reported, a MVFR layer settled in behind. CAD, RQB, MOP, later even MBS, all developed something around 020 at least SCT-BKN, usually with a BKN-OVC layer at 040-050 so no room to squeeze between. Not being much in the mood to run scud in northern MI, I cancelled.

This is the second time in little over a month that a briefer at Lansing FSS has tried to convince me that conditions were VFR when my gut told me they probably weren't. Last time I listened to him and launched, and wound up too close to IMC for comfort. That time there was not even a front to worry about, but the forecast discussion had mentioned plenty of low level moisture around 925 MB, which is about 2500 MSL (only 1200 AGL in northern lower MI).

I am getting to where I talk to the Lansing briefers only as a formality and rely on other wx sources to decide go vs no go. There are some very good briefers there but there are others who don't seem to have much weather sense and it's hard to tell how good a briefer is the first time you talk to them. Sorry if this sounds overly harsh, but having been burned by one too many "airbrushed" briefings, I just don't trust them any more.

I guess this turned into a sort of rant... sorry about that. Anyway the main point is to consider ALL available sources of wx info, not just the "official" ones.

Liz

edited to add: shortly after I cancelled, MOP reported +RA. As we say in MI, if you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes.

From Hawahi to NYC, from Arizona to Alaska, I've found briefers to be generally quite conservative, in other words they're very quick to say " VFR not recommended."

If I'd stayed on the ground everytime they said that, I'd have missed more than 40% of my MVFR flights over the years.

 

[BillG]

Everyone has different minimums. You made the right decision for yourself - I probably would have launched with that weather. The trick is knowing how to interpret what the briefer (who doesn't know your minimums) is telling you as well as the other weather sources.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Liz I think they have taken a lot of heat for always being so negative, maybe you are seeing the after-effects of this.

My opinion is,... they shouldn't be offering that opinion at the end of the briefing. They should only be offering facts. ('the front is here, moving this fast; the actuals and forecasts are...'). The pilot's job is to assemble these facts and then decide for him/herself. Offering opinion opens them to liability anyway....and a bunch of second-guessing so I never understood why they ever started the 'recommendation' thing. If a person really needs advice I would ask a mentor. I still ask some of mine, "what do you think of this?" , they know me, my aircraft and experience level plus have better local wx knowledge.
Anyway good job; and your no-go decision shows how I think it should work - you made a good decision independent of recommendations or suggestions of others.

 

[grattonja]

Hard calls, whether to believe the forecast, and FSS interpretation of it. I have flown to BWI from S37 twice in the last week. One forecast was wrong and one was right. Here's the short version.

Last Thursday, got to pick up about 5 pm. Always dicey this time of year, due to pop up boomers. FSS looks at the radar (same stuff that I have looked at) and says they think it will not build up, that the high overhead is going to keep it from coming in. Right before I launched I took one last look at radar to see that a cell had formed over Altoona. It was far away, but it was my first indication that all was not as forecast.

The trip down was fine, but we ate dinner down there while we waited for the cells to go overhead and break up. The weather built quickly up to a very large cell which, fortunately, dissipated in MD and DE. BWI itself was directly hit, despite the briefing and the TAFs saying otherwise. No big deal, but they got it wrong. I was filing IFR to get out of the ADIZ anyway, so no big. Got .4 of actual, but nothing bad as the echoes were pretty weak and mostly gone by the time I launched.

Yesterday I took my inlaws back. This time, again, nothing forecast. Dry overhead and a high ridge. This time I am looking at an echo over Elkins and some marching up through SW VA. I think they may be a problem. Again, FSS says they will not build up/get to us. This time, we got nothing. When I looked, again, right before takeoff, I could see the cells dissipating. No problem. They were right on the money.

Sometimes weather predictions are really just our best educated guesses about what is going to happen. I still talk to FSS, and I frequently learn a lot from their forecasts. But I do also know that I can read short term weather patterns pretty well myself. Experience is a great educator.

Jim G

 

[Richard]

Because my experience has been that briefers are universally conservative I am surprised you'd say otherwise, 2x even. Which brings my attention to your wx dechipering skills. You've presented us with TAFs and partial FA. What other wx products do you use as part of a normal flight planning?

Also, could it be coincidence WRT burnoff and the sky obscurations associated with the slow moving cold front? You say isol pop up TS were coming into play the longer you waited. I'd expect that because it's connotes convection, not unheard of these summer months.

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

Liz I think they have taken a lot of heat for always being so negative, maybe you are seeing the after-effects of this.

My opinion is,... they shouldn't be offering that opinion at the end of the briefing. They should only be offering facts. ('the front is here, moving this fast; the actuals and forecasts are...'). The pilot's job is to assemble these facts and then decide for him/herself. Offering opinion opens them to liability anyway....and a bunch of second-guessing so I never understood why they ever started the 'recommendation' thing. If a person really needs advice I would ask a mentor. I still ask some of mine, "what do you think of this?" , they know me, my aircraft and experience level plus have better local wx knowledge.
Anyway good job; and your no-go decision shows how I think it should work - you made a good decision independent of recommendations or suggestions of others.

Ditto that. If I wanted a fly/no fly recommendation, I'd ask for one.
Of course in my early PPL PIC days, when I did ask FSS a few times, then they wouldn't give an opinion !

 

[azure]

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Actually I've *never* gotten a fly/no fly recommendation from FSS... they pretty much always just tell me what they think the conditions are like, and what they're going to be like. What I'm griping about, probably a little too loudly because I'm bummed at having wasted my morning, is that all too often the actual flying conditions aren't anything like what they say. Of course I know that weather forecasting is an inexact science, I'm not talking about that... I mean that too many times there is available information that would paint a more accurate picture of the conditions but that SOME briefers just don't consider it, or aren't aware of it, or for whatever reason fail to present it. My briefer this morning hadn't even noticed the OVC010 at GLR until I mentioned it. Maybe it was too far from my flight path. But at the time the only station behind the front along my route was TVC with SCT017. She mentioned that and paused, then said "but that's the only place I see that's showing anything that low, and it's just SCT".

Richard, this front did have some weak convection along with it but I never said anything about pop-up TS, where did you get that? I said "isolated echoes", some of which could have been virga as the briefer said, but MOP got a heavy shower. I read this activity as generated by the front but diurnally enhanced. As far as what I use, I always start with the surface analysis charts plus the NWS forecast discussions for an overview, then consult the prog charts, FA, TAFs, surface reports, and of course radar. In this case it was the discussion that alerted me to possible MVFR conditions behind the front since they had seen that happen upstream. Actually they mentioned two frontal boundaries with MVFR between them, clear sky behind the trailing front. Given that, wouldn't you be a little doubtful that low clouds that seem to pop up everywhere behind the leading front, are just "burnoff"?

Jim, I agree, you can learn a lot from the briefers who know the area weather patterns well and can read the reports and give you a good guess of what is going to happen. It's just that they are so rarely the ones I get to talk to. I guess I'm just a little dismayed at repeatedly finding that with my mostly unofficial sources, I sometimes have a better picture of what's actually out there than my randomly chosen briefer does.

Liz

 

[EdFred]

Liz -

You know that in Michigan the best weather forecast is the one made for yesterday's weather. We had crud moving in off the lake this morning. Nothing happened. VFR all day, though it looked bad. Hurry up and get that IR and then you just have to watch for convection and ice.

"Clouds do not concern me, Admiral!"

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

I mean that too many times there is available information that would paint a more accurate picture of the conditions but that SOME briefers just don't consider it, or aren't aware of it, or for whatever reason fail to present it.

ah, I see. Well, if you have access to adds, etc before you leave - then self-brief first is my sop, then call fss to see if I've missed anything. Not all situations permit that however, sometimes you have to rely on another human to present all the facts!

 

[Richard]

Liz, You said you waited to see what would develop and that there were isolated echos. To me, waiting sounds like the passage of time and with the passage of time the ground starts it's daily heating. Add in a temp deferential from frontal passage. Those things coupled with the isolated echoes got me thinking of TS. Please excuse my assumptions.


When I contact a briefer I have already studied the wx so I may compare my analysis with his. At least, this allows me to ask of him educated questions. Further digging often reveals the true form of the obscuration. Most every briefer I have talked to enjoys the in-depth discussion. Conditions like you describe are most ideal for those types of discussions. The IR sat is good but, at least for me, you'd need eagle eyes to really determine what you're looking at. That is, support the sat with other wx products such as the Wind/Temp Prog (700 & 850 Mb) and 12 Hr Lo Lvl Sig Wx Prog. I would add the 4 panel prog charts and the FS to your briefings. They help to see the big picture and seeing the big picture may very well decide the go in an otherwise no go decision. Reading the wind progs in graphical format have really helped to see the big picture. While I use the FA it is mostly in the outlook period hours before the acutal flight with the exception of AC, WA, WS (WST, I'm not going) which I want in as real time as posible.

I do understand your frustration. Wait until you cancel a short x/c in CAVU because of wx.

 

[azure]

ah, I see. Well, if you have access to adds, etc before you leave - then self-brief first is my sop, then call fss to see if I've missed anything. Not all situations permit that however, sometimes you have to rely on another human to present all the facts!

Point taken, Dave... so far the few times I've gone into a field without a wx terminal like weathermation, I haven't stayed long enough to really need a full briefing on the way out. Though I'd really prefer adds, awc, and the nws products, I've never yet felt that I had to rely totally on the briefer for wx. Not sure I'm ever gonna be comfortable with that.

Liz

 

[azure]

Liz, You said you waited to see what would develop and that there were isolated echos. To me, waiting sounds like the passage of time and with the passage of time the ground starts it's daily heating. Add in a temp deferential from frontal passage. Those things coupled with the isolated echoes got me thinking of TS. Please excuse my assumptions.


When I contact a briefer I have already studied the wx so I may compare my analysis with his. At least, this allows me to ask of him educated questions. Further digging often reveals the true form of the obscuration. Most every briefer I have talked to enjoys the in-depth discussion. Conditions like you describe are most ideal for those types of discussions. The IR sat is good but, at least for me, you'd need eagle eyes to really determine what you're looking at. That is, support the sat with other wx products such as the Wind/Temp Prog (700 & 850 Mb) and 12 Hr Lo Lvl Sig Wx Prog. I would add the 4 panel prog charts and the FS to your briefings. They help to see the big picture and seeing the big picture may very well decide the go in an otherwise no go decision. Reading the wind progs in graphical format have really helped to see the big picture. While I use the FA it is mostly in the outlook period hours before the acutal flight with the exception of AC, WA, WS (WST, I'm not going) which I want in as real time as posible.

I do understand your frustration. Wait until you cancel a short x/c in CAVU because of wx.

Hi Richard, yes the reason I was waiting is because the front, moving downstate, was going to be encountering drier and drier air and also weakening. It was not forecast to leave MVFR clouds in its wake at MOP and MBS (midstate), but the forecasts had been having a lot of trouble with it over the last 24 hours so I took the attitude of "I'll believe it when I see it".

I guess I should take it more in stride to have to ask probing questions when talking to the briefer, it sounds like that is pretty much what everyone learns to do. I agree about being self-briefing as much as possible beforehand, that's what I do too, and I guess it's experiences like mine today that point up why it's so important, whenever possible.

Thanks also for your suggestion of using the four panel prog charts and the FD (or did you really mean FS, I don't recognise that abbrev?). I do use those as well, though so far usually just the more watered-down surface prog charts and the winds/temps aloft graphical progs on adds, as much of the additional info on the 4-panels, e.g. freezing level, isn't of much interest to me yet as a VFR-only pilot (*any* visible moisture in my path is too much, at any temp). One of these days (hopefully soon) that will change though...

Liz

 

[Richard]

Oops, yep, I meant FD, not FS.

 

[Richard]

Liz, I have spent several hours throughout today thinking about your intended flight. I looked on AirNav to find your route of flight then went to AWC for a glance at your wx. And I thought some more about your decision to wait....

A cold front passage with the attendent low pressure area...increased turb with frontal passage but occassional showery precip prior to passage. The low was centered ESE of your departure point, away from your route. Where there is a cold front there is a warm front forming somewhere...I see the winds were veering around to become more easterly....indicative of the warm front. A warm front would tend to wrap around the high side (NE quadrant) of the low and bring increased convection and continuous precip with decreasing vis. In this regard, waiting around wouldn't be a good idea.

I can understand you may have decided to wait thinking that it would clear up but the winds were light (lo pressure gradient) so I would say conditions wouldn't change for some time. Although, the further out you get, the better it would have gotten but that is a function of distance from the weather maker and not because the wx has disappeared; it's still there, just not where you are if you had launched towards your destination. Timing really factors heavily into this; with a slo moving system it becomes tedious to try to accurately gauge when is the best time.

It doesn't matter if I or anyone else had gone, what's important is if you would have been comfortable going. You made the correct decision, the hard part is holding true to that decision. An optimist sees marginal as almost good. A pessimist sees marginal as almost bad. Experience will dictate whether you are opti- or pessimistic on a given day.

You have indicated you would have been better prepared if you had the usual wx products available to you. You were faced with marginal conditions and had only a single source (briefer) of wx information. As far as wasting your time, you, having the marginal conditions and the single source before you, could have made the decision much earlier thereby decreasing the time wasted. Personal mins apply in all kinds of ways--not only to sky conditions--another way is the proper information properly dessiminated. That is, without at least the minimum requirements for flight information, the decision is automatic. Going up for a look see is always an option but always have a Plan B. Nonetheless, having gotten the outlook the night before and having watched the wx for the last several days it is quite possible you would have opted for an aftn flight rather than a morning flight.

In your most recent post you imply you won't be flying in precip. It's doable to fly in precip and maintain VFR. Don't be adverse to expanding your envelope.

 

[Richard]

Point taken, Dave... so far the few times I've gone into a field without a wx terminal like weathermation, I haven't stayed long enough to really need a full briefing on the way out. Though I'd really prefer adds, awc, and the nws products, I've never yet felt that I had to rely totally on the briefer for wx. Not sure I'm ever gonna be comfortable with that.

Liz

The briefer can be your very best friend. They have been trained specifically for what they do so they are a valuable resource to the pilot. You have to know what you're looking for. Before I make the call I always review what information I have and try to formulate some intelligent questions. Sometimes that takes sometime but it pays off because my questions may be the prompt the briefer wants to delve in to conveying to you a deeper level of understanding. Given that most pilots want only the briefest of briefs a briefer usually won't offer unsolicited information beyond the basic requirements.

Calling the briefer late at night when they're less busy is a wonderful time to pick their brains. It's educational.

 

[azure]

Hi Richard,

I really appreciate all the time you put into thinking about my wx and decision making process, it's helpful to listen to the way you would have approached the problem and compare that with mine. As to the details, either I'm missing something or we are not looking at the same charts because the low associated with my front was up in NE Ontario moving into Quebec, not to the ESE, so the warm front was a great distance away. I could be wrong but I would guess that much if not most of the moisture associated with it was being picked up from the Lakes and not wrapping around the low. There was no continuous precip with it and the only vis reductions were in the heavier showers, which were widely scattered. At my level of wx understanding, Lake influences complicate things so much that even short term trends are very hard to predict - you know Ed wasn't totally joking about today's best forecast being for yesterday's weather. That's partly why I always read the forecast discussions carefully, also because the DTX office is very good about putting out timely updates whenever things start to deviate from progged. I think the bottom line is, as you say, that it was a very slow mover, and I was trying to time my departure based on forecasts and observed trends when the front had already proved itself to be very unpredictable. As it turned out the front did not quite dissipate as forecast and slowed down again as it approached the Detroit area and generated scattered showers and low ceilings that did not clear out until after midnight, even after a NWS update in late afternoon predicting that all of it would be out of the area by 8pm. Had I made the trip I would have been returning in the worst of it and it's anyone's guess if I would have been able to land at PHN or had to put down somewhere else and wait it out. My partner needed the airplane for OSH this morning - another factor making me lean in the no-go direction.

It's interesting how everyone has different minimums. My very first primary CFI, who had several thousand hours, would never launch VFR if there was any precip, even light showers, within 20 miles. Actually what I wrote before was a little exaggerated, I've flown VFR in light precip and probably will do it again - as long as it is above freezing and doesn't reduce vis below about 7sm. IME in anything heavy enough to reduce to MVFR vis, it's too easy to fly into a cloud that you can't see until it's too late.

I really like your idea about calling the briefer late at night - most of the time I'm calling at peak times when they don't really have the time to spend with me. Thanks again!

Liz

 

[bbchien]

Really good string, Thank you Liz. I've tried to to pen to paper to describe the pilot weather decision making process, and always failed.

 

[gismo]

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Actually I've *never* gotten a fly/no fly recommendation from FSS... they pretty much always just tell me what they think the conditions are like, and what they're going to be like. What I'm griping about, probably a little too loudly because I'm bummed at having wasted my morning, is that all too often the actual flying conditions aren't anything like what they say. Of course I know that weather forecasting is an inexact science, I'm not talking about that... I mean that too many times there is available information that would paint a more accurate picture of the conditions but that SOME briefers just don't consider it, or aren't aware of it, or for whatever reason fail to present it. My briefer this morning hadn't even noticed the OVC010 at GLR until I mentioned it. Maybe it was too far from my flight path. But at the time the only station behind the front along my route was TVC with SCT017. She mentioned that and paused, then said "but that's the only place I see that's showing anything that low, and it's just SCT".

Jim, I agree, you can learn a lot from the briefers who know the area weather patterns well and can read the reports and give you a good guess of what is going to happen. It's just that they are so rarely the ones I get to talk to. I guess I'm just a little dismayed at repeatedly finding that with my mostly unofficial sources, I sometimes have a better picture of what's actually out there than my randomly chosen briefer does.

Liz

One thing that's not always obvious to us pilots is that briefers are generally not trained meterologists, they are trained to disseminate (and to some extent interpret) weather forecasts and reports, but not to create or modify them. The forecasts themselves come from the NWS (hopefully that will continue despite the idiotic efforts of some legislators) and ultimately from some rather complicated computer programs. Your local TV weathercasters get pretty much the same information and then proceed to make their own guesses as to which parts of the computer modeled forecast they believe to be accurate and which portions to "tweak" based on their local knowledge and gut feelings. Some briefers will attempt to do the same thing with a lot less training but in some cases more experience. Either way you have humans trying to outguess computers and given that neither (humans or computers) are all that good at it, sometimes the predictions are way off and often times they are at least a bit off. Remember, a forecast is just a guess with a college degree behind it.

What should a pilot do about this? Some try to make their own guesses about the briefer's guesses WRT the NWS guesses as to the computer model's accuracy. The chances for success at this aren't all that good although many a pilot has the opinion that he/she can make a better guess than the "pro's". Of course a lot of that opinion probably stems from our (human) tendency to remember our good guesses better than we recall the bad ones. You could, or course, obtain a PhD in meterology putting you at least on par with the NWS guys as far as training goes, but personally I'd rather go flying and the fact that I'd still make bad guesses would make me feel rather unappreciative of all the training. So what's left is for us obtain the best forecasts we can and then base the go/no go decision on a combination of the wx predictions, our need to "get there", and the consequences of aborting/modifying the trip mid flight. And that's where a lot of us seem to go wrong, dealing with weather we discover along the way that doesn't turn out to be as nice as the forecast (and our own wishful thinking). In the daytime it would be an extremely rare situation where a VFR pilot could legitimately encounter unacceptable unforecast weather enroute that wasn't avoidable simply by changing course, returning home, or landing instead of proceeding.

 

[pete177]

Given that forcast, if I was trying to get somewhere I would have flown. I've done quite a few cross countries vfr in the last 3 years and my experience has been that the briefers are generally very conservative. The weather can always go either way. You take off given a reasonable forecast and adjust as necessary along the route. If the situation starts to make you uncomfortable you always know where the nearest air strip is to set it down on. Flying between 1000ft and 3000ft agl when you've got good visibility at that alt has never really bothered me but I always knew which way my out was for my landing spot. In the flat lands its pretty safe, in the hilly areas I was always much more conservative about that sort of thing. Leaving out of southern NJ towards ND it always seemed like I was scud running over those damn hills in western PA
In the end a weather forcast is nothing but an educated guess and I'm constantly reassessing while enroute. Given your situation and it being nothing but a pleasure flight I might not have gone either. Not because it was too unsafe but because having to deal with marginal weather as a vfr pilot isnt the most fun and relaxing thing one could do on a Sunday afternoon.