Blue skies or cloudy minds? Associations between momentary affect, cloud cover, and sky conditions in a geographic ecological momentary assessment study.

Potential associations with weather as an ever-present environmental phenomenon have received not much systematic attention, even though in lay perception weather plays a vital role in the evaluation of one's day and is also assumed to be strongly associated with affect. The present study assesses the association between momentary affective well-being, self-reported stress, self-reported rumination and cloud cover as well as cloud height in a geographical ecological momentary assessment study. The sample comprised 83 individuals (55.4% female), with participants ranging between 18 and 62 years of age (M = 29.63, SD = 8.65) and a total of 2490 data points, carrying limited informational value for the between level results. Participants were prompted randomly three times a day over maximally 20 consecutive days. We used dynamic structural equation modelling to model inter- and intraindividual differences and fluctuations. Separate models were run for rumination, stress, and momentary affective well-being. As environmental variables, cloud coverage, cloud height, and whether participants were aware of the sky condition were assessed. The only meaningful association emerged between stress and the perception of the sky. However, the results revealed methodological challenges. Geofencing might be more expedient than time-based prompting to prevent the majority of data points being assessed indoors. Also, in case the nearest weather stations are far away, photos might be better suited with subsequent expert rating for categorizing an environmental phenomenon as volatile as clouds.