It’s time to take another plunge.
As daylight saving time ends, the clock will strike 1 a.m. twice on Sunday morning.
What you need to know about daylight saving time and the reasons behind the twice-yearly clock adjustments in the United States is provided here.
What is the end of daylight saving time?
Daylight saving time runs from March 10 until November 3. On Sunday, we will gain an additional hour, with clocks going from 1:59 a.m. back to 1 a.m., in contrast to the spring, when we lose an hour and the clocks completely miss the 2 o’clock hour.
As the temperatures continue to drop and we go into the late fall and winter months, the sun will also begin to set earlier across the United States.
Why is this taking place?
According to the U.S. Astronomical Applications Department, the practice was created by the Standard Time Act in 1918 and aims to prolong the summer daylight hours by delaying sunset by one hour.
After being approved, daylight saving time was a contentious concept that was swiftly revoked in 1919, turning it into a local issue. According to the department, it was observed from 1942 to 1945 and was reenacted in the early stages of World War II.
Following the war, different states implemented daylight saving time differently until 1966, when the Uniform Time Act was signed, standardizing the dates of DST but allowing for local exemptions if states or towns choose not to participate.
Since 2007, daylight saving time has begun on the second Sunday in March and concluded on the first Sunday in November, while the government claims that the defined start and end dates have altered over time.
What is the duration of standard time?
Until spring arrives and daylight saving time resumes, standard time will continue to be observed throughout the United States, along with earlier sunsets and darker evenings.
When it’s time to repeat the process, daylight saving time in 2025 begins on Sunday, March 9, and concludes on Sunday, November 2.
Are there states that don’t follow the rules?
According to the Astronomical Applications Department, Hawaii and the majority of Arizona do not follow daylight saving time, hence they do not change their clocks twice a year.
Is this exclusive to the United States?
No, according to the department, “summer time” is observed in most nations. The majority of nations that follow daylight saving time in the Northern Hemisphere are located in North America and Europe.
Other nations observe daylight saving time, however not all of them follow the same timetable as the United States.
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The government states that while some nations in the Southern Hemisphere also follow daylight saving time, the start and finish dates of their “summer time” are inverted from ours since the seasons are reversed below the equator.
The Pew Research Center estimates that only around one-third of all nations use daylight saving time. Approximately half of all nations used to follow the practice, but they no longer do.
What steps are being taken to stop the practice?
The Sunshine Protection Act, enacted by the U.S. Senate in March 2022, would end the practice of changing our clocks and establish daylight saving time as a permanent year-round regulation.
Hawaii and the majority of Arizona would maintain year-round standard time under the plan.
The United States will continue to follow the time change until the law is passed by the House of Representatives and signed by the current president, however, since it has now stopped in that body.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 20 states have enacted resolutions or measures to adopt year-round daylight saving time in the past six years, and nearly all states have explored legislation to maintain standard or daylight saving time. However, the states would have to wait for Congress to adopt the measure before they could implement the change since federal law presently prohibits year-round daylight saving time.
What do medical professionals say?
According to some research, implementing daylight saving time all year round may lower the incidence of crimes and traffic accidents.
However, other experts oppose the idea of perpetual daylight saving time. This is because sleep scientists believe that noon, sometimes referred to as solar time, is when the sun should be at its greatest position in the sky.
People in the central time zone of the United States are precisely aligned with solar time during standard time, but they are pushed further away from that clock during daylight saving time.
In 2022, Dr. Karin Johnson, a professor of neurology at UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate and a board member of Save Standard Time, a charity that promotes permanent standard time, told NBC News that the more misalignment with solar time, the greater the chance of health issues.
The oscillation of the clocks is preferred by sleep specialists over permanent daylight saving time. Dr. Kin Yuen, a sleep medicine expert at the University of California, San Francisco and a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, stated in 2022 that people may feel more drowsy when they wake up in the dark because their levels of chemicals like cortisol may be greater.
People may sleep later during daylight saving time because the sun sets later, which might lead the body to produce less melatonin.
Furthermore, a June 2022 research discovered that vehicle fatality rates were 22% higher for individuals whose clock timings were not precisely synchronized with the sun than for those who lived within 30 minutes of solar time.
