Mercury now moved maybe 3 degrees due South (less than a fingerwidth at arms length) of Venus, running neck and neck.  Probably two, 2.5 hours above the horizon.

Rio Grande valley was so obscured by smoke most of the day Cabazon was invisible at sunset.  I'm thinking July 4 will be the day the sun will drop down the smokestack.

Sun must have set fire to some trees somewhere off to the West when it went down a couple of days ago.  That's all I can figure to account for all this smoke in the air.  Maybe over around Mount Taylor.

Couple of years ago the worst fire in recent AZ history was set by an Apache forest fire fighter out of need for employment.  Wind was out of the SW .... that fire filled most of the NM sky with ash and smoke for weeks .... some thought it was a nuclear war we hadn't been advised of.... some thought those Los Alamos science boys had dropped another atomic bomb on us the way they did in '45. 

But this has to be North of Apache firefighter country.... maybe over in Navajo, Zuni, Acoma, Hopi or Laguna territory.  Maybe even  Ute.

But I'm betting it was just the sun did it.

Jack