Time Changes This Weekend: Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday; 'Fall Back’ Saturday Night

Time Changes This Weekend: Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday; 'Fall Back’ Saturday Night

The times they are (soon) a changin’.

The annual fall ritual of “falling back” – moving your clock back one hour to accommodate the end of daylight saving time - is this weekend. Daylight saving time officially ends 2 a.m. local time Sunday, Nov. 3. Most people will move their clocks back one hour before going to bed Saturday night.

The change essentially moves more daylight hours into the morning and more darkness into the evening hours.

The move from DST will take place almost everywhere in the U.S., with the exception of Hawaii and most of Arizona, which don’t observe the change.

We’ll have to move the clocks again on March 8, 2020 when we “spring forward” an hour and adjust clocks ahead.

Why do we change our clocks?

While the origin of changing our clocks is traced to several people, the movement became more widespread during World War I when the government began the push to extend daylight (and therefore working) hours while also saving fuel. The change was made official in March 1918, with clock moving ahead one hour.

Daylight saving time went away shortly after the war, only to return during World War II. It was used year-round during the war but the practice wasn’t used consistently among the states after the hostilities ended.

It took federal action to standardize the time change.

Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, establishing a schedule for DST: clocks would be moved ahead one hour on the last Sunday in April and one hour back on the last Sunday in October.

The schedule was altered several times in the following decades, most recently by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which set the start of DST (springing forward) at the second Sunday in March and the ending of DST (fall back) on the first Sunday in November.


Source: "Time changes this weekend: daylight saving time ends Sunday; ‘fall back’ Saturday night" AL.com (October 28, 2019)  Leada Gore