Winter’s gray chases away clear signs of daylight saving

Our first day of daylight saving time, awaited by many, seemed anticlimactic on Sunday as clouds hid the evening sun, and what we had saved seemed only to be dimness.

Also, the day appeared miscast in the role it is often assigned: an unofficial start to spring. Instead, the day of daylight saving proved to be the coldest so far in March.

We may have tried by clock manipulation to spring forward, but in Washington, the season did not go along.

Our high temperature of 43 degrees was lower than any previous day this March. And as of 5 p.m., our low of 33 rested but a single degree above freezing, lower than any other March day.

But even if our Sunday evening skies seemed cold, wintry and gray, they stayed gray an hour more than on all this year’s gray evenings of standard time.

And in that reluctance to yield to darkness lay perhaps the promise of spring.