I understand "cloying" to mean something good that becomes distasteful in excess.

Here is a sentence I read today from this article:

But the aerial assault on the stubborn blaze, which blanketed much of the New Orleans area with cloying smoke for a third straight day, is unlikely to extinguish the fire or end the smoke quickly, Landrieu said.

So when I read "cloying smoke" I assume the author intends to portray smoke as pleasurable in limited quantities? Is this just an idiom? Help me make sense of it. From a google search it appears the phrase is not uncommon.