You ain’t going nowhere as fog bedevils SD Int. Airport

The fog, thick and unrelenting, crept from the coast to the valleys early Saturday morning, clinging to the ground like a conspiracy no one could escape.

Visibility dropped to a quarter mile or less, stranding thousands of would-be flyers at San Diego International Airport, their plans grounded by a phenomenon as indifferent as it was inevitable.

The dense fog advisory was supposed to lift by 9 a.m., Saturday but fog, like bureaucracy, doesn’t care much for deadlines. It lingered stubbornly along the coast and beyond, as if mocking the forecast. By nightfall, it would return, draping the region in a damp gray stillness and dropping temperatures into the low 40s, a numbing reminder that nature always has the final say.

Officials at SAN, exuding the cheerful helplessness of people long accustomed to dealing with disappointed masses, urged travelers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport. Harbor Drive, they implied, might as well have been a cul-de-sac leading nowhere.

A glance at the airport’s Flight Status page painted a bleak picture. By 9 a.m., over a hundred flights were delayed or canceled, their destinations now as unattainable as dreams of a fog-free morning. By 1 p.m., the situation hadn’t improved much. Flights listed as “on time” were as rare as warm smiles at the airline counter. By 7 p.m., the story remained largely unchanged—a foggy metaphor for life’s persistent unpredictability.

The holiday travel season had barely kicked off when dense fog swept in like an uninvited guest, wreaking havoc on flights in and out of San Diego International Airport. It hung over the region with the smug inevitability of bad luck, delaying nearly 800 flights between December 18 and December 20, according to FlightAware. And as if to tease weary travelers, the fog wasn’t finished yet.

The National Weather Service, as perplexed by fog as travelers were by their rebooked itineraries, saw signs that the worst of the low visibility might be retreating inland. But the forecasters hedged their bets, dangling the possibility of another late-night advisory like a bureaucratic shrug.

“We’re watching the Interstate 15 corridor closely tonight,” said Casey Oswant, lead forecaster and resident fog philosopher. “The fog can be tricky, finicky even. Right now, most of the dense fog has lifted from the coast, but we’ll need to see more widespread reports before issuing an advisory.”

By early evening, the coast had traded its dense fog for low clouds, a half-hearted improvement at best. Still, meteorologist Brandt Maxwell warned, the fog could regroup overnight, forming slightly inland, east of Interstate 5, instead of west where it had caused chaos the night before. In other words, the fog would do whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted, and everyone else would just have to adjust.

Such was the nature of dense fog in December—finicky, disruptive, and stubbornly uncooperative, much like the holiday travel season itself.

San Diego International Airport on Friday, Dec. 20, 2024/CBS8 screenshot

San Diego airport officials, in their infinite wisdom, have prophesied a great migration—1.3 million souls surging through the terminals over an 18-day holiday spectacle that began Thursday. It’s an astounding number, a perfect storm of suitcases, sweat, and small talk, converging on the gates with the inevitability of fate. Friday through Monday is predicted to be a grand crescendo, a symphony of boarding passes and exasperated sighs.

On Friday morning, the airport issued a missive—a travel alert on social media, no less—urging travelers to steel themselves for the whimsical cruelty of fog. “Be aware,” it warned, as if awareness alone could part the haze. “We’re experiencing some flight delays due to fog. Check with your airline before leaving for the airport.” A reasonable request, except that reason tends to evaporate alongside visibility.

Speaking of visibility, it played a cruel game of hide-and-seek. Friday evening, it was forecasted to shrink to a mere mile, which, by Oswant’s reckoning, was practically a gift compared to the night before. Thursday’s fog had descended with biblical fervor, wrapping the airport in a quarter-mile cocoon by 8 p.m., only to deepen its chokehold as the night wore on. By 4 a.m. Friday, it was less visibility and more rumor, the horizon swallowed whole. And yet, the planes persisted. Somehow, they always do.

Friday was a big travel hassle

There were over 300 flight delays at the airport on Friday alone, a staggering number that, according to FlightAware, was less an anomaly and more an inevitability. Delays begat delays, a domino dance of frustration as airlines scrambled to reassign passengers to later flights, as if juggling chaos were a skill that could ever be mastered.

“Year-round weather conditions can impact both departing and arriving flights,” said Nicole Hall, the airport spokesperson, delivering the sort of statement that sounded both official and helpless. On Thursday and Friday, it was fog—thick, unrelenting, and profoundly indifferent to the timetables of mankind. Visibility at the San Diego International Airport was reduced to the kind of guesswork usually reserved for séances.

Over 100 flights were diverted to other airports, and about 30 gave up entirely, canceled in what might be described as an act of mercy. Hall, ever the realist, warned that the fog wasn’t finished yet. It might linger, she said, like an unwelcome guest who doesn’t quite catch the hint.

To mitigate the chaos, Airport Authority staff and volunteers were deployed to assist passengers, their mission noble but Sisyphean: keeping tempers from flaring and gate areas from spilling into anarchy.

Passengers were advised to keep checking their flight statuses before venturing to the airport, a suggestion so pragmatic it bordered on absurdity. Fog or no fog, Hall reminded everyone, delays were as much a part of air travel as cramped seats and tiny bags of pretzels. And in the holiday season, those delays took on a kind of poetic inevitability, the universe’s way of reminding everyone that time, like visibility, was a fleeting luxury.