no view

This is, pretty much, a picture of nothing: a flat grey sky with a hint of setting sun behind it.   But indeed, a lot's missing.   Where is the view, where are the mountains?   Somewhere, about 200 miles out of sight, the huge Arizona fires are burning, and as the wind has come up this evening so the whole of the Rio Grande valley and all the flat land either side of it has filled with smoke - after I took this picture, it became thicker, colored rather apocalyptically like a sandstorm with what, I suppose, must have been the sun behind it all.   To be sure, we're a long way from the danger of these fires - indeed, there's scrubby semi-desert between them and us (though the pyrophobe in me has just found mention of something in the Santa Fe New Mexican's report that I'd never heard of before: the creation of pyrocumulus clouds from the billowing smoke that can create their own thunder and lightning, with the strikes potentially creating more fires).   But the smell is pervasive and distracting (even from the news story featuring Congressman Weiner's unremarkable yet bulging grey underpants).   I seem to be doing little but writing about weather in its various manifestations these last few weeks, and wish that it wasn't being so sensational.