Of course, you’ll get an extra hour of sleep when the clocks “go back” this weekend. But the end of daylight saving time this weekend also means much earlier sunsets.
Before the time change, sunset in the Chicago area on Friday will be at 5:43 p.m., NBC 5 meteorologist Iisha Scott said.
But after the clock turns back to 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 3, sunset will be more than an hour earlier: at 4:41 p.m., Scott said.
And from there it only gets faster. By Dec. 1, Scott said, the sun will set at 4:19 p.m.
Later in the month, at 3:19 a.m. on December 21, the winter solstice occurs, which marks the day of the year with the fewest hours of daylight. It is also called the shortest day or the darkest day of the year.
When do we change our hours?
Under federal law, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November in most of the United States.
This year, that date falls on November 3, with the clocks moving back an hour at 2 a.m. that morning.
What is daylight saving time?
Daylight saving time is a clock change that typically begins in the spring and ends in the fall in what is often called “spring forward” and “roll back.”
Under the terms of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.
On these days, the clocks go forward or back an hour.
But it was not always this way.
The clocks used to go forward on the first Sunday in April and remained so until the last Sunday in October, but a change was implemented in part to allow children to trick-or-treat more in broad daylight.
In the United States, Daylight Saving Time lasts a total of 34 weeks, lasting from early to mid-March until early November in states that observe it.
Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of daylight saving time when he wrote in a 1784 essay about saving candles and said, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy , rich and wise. But this was more of a satire than a serious consideration.
Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916, during World War I, to save fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon after.
The United States did not adopt daylight saving time until March 19, 1918. It was unpopular and abolished after World War I.
On February 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt established year-round daylight saving time, which he called “wartime.” This lasted until September 30, 1945.
Daylight saving time did not become the norm in the United States until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time nationwide in established time zones. It specified that the clocks would go forward one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and go back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.
States could still exempt themselves from DST, as long as the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a year-round trial period of daylight saving time, from January 1974 to April 1975, in order to conserve energy .
When will daylight saving time resume?
In 2025, daylight saving time will resume on March 9 and clocks will then go forward.
Which states observe daylight saving time?
Almost all U.S. states observe DST, except Arizona (although some Native American tribes observe DST in their territories) and Hawaii. U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.
