The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
TIME TO SPRING FORWARD
TURN CLOCKS AHEAD ONE HOUR AT 2 A.M. SUNDAY
Would you trade a one-time hour of sleep loss in exchange for an entire season of later sunsets? You won’t have much choice in the matter tonight. After four months, we’re set to return to daylight saving time.
We’ll turn our clocks ahead one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, effectively making it 3 a.m. (So don’t schedule any important meetings at 2:30 a.m., because that time won’t exist Sunday. It’s also not a great time for a meeting anyway.)
We lose an hour of sleep, but only for one night. It’s just to shift us toward later sunsets until November.
Of course, this will come with later sunrises, but most of us would prefer that sunlight at the end of the day, after work, when we can enjoy it. Waking up in the dark seems like a fair trade.
The exception will be Arizona, which, save for the Navajo Reservation, remains on standard time all year long. That means they’ll keep the earlier sunsets. Their logic was that the characteristically hot climate meant cooler, darker evenings would be a welcome respite from the heat.
After a winter of short days and cruel sunsets sometimes falling before 5 p.m., many in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic yearn for the commencement of daylight saving time. It heralds the first noticeable step to springtime, with the weather eventually following suit and the days becoming longer. In fact, the days grow longer by a greater margin during the next two weeks than any point all year. Daylight is increasing by roughly 2½ minutes each day.
The annual shortening of the days in the months leading up to winter — and gradual regaining of sunlight in the spring — comes thanks to the Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt on its axis.
Day length varies the most at the poles and least at the equator. In between, the annual variability is a bit more moderate.
In Chicago, the difference between the shortest and longest day of the year is 6 hours, 6 minutes. Closer to the equator in Miami, that difference is 3 hours, 14 minutes.
And during the summer, days are actually longer in Chicago than in Miami.
Standard time — which we abide by in winter — was invented to compensate for the dwindling of daylight in the winter.