On Sunday, November 3, at 2 am, we’ll turn our clocks back one hour, heralding the end of daylight saving time for much of the country. The biggest consequence: The change shifts daylight back into the morning hours.
For 9-to-5 office workers, it means saying goodbye to leaving work while it’s still light out. And for weekend workers, it means an additional glorious hour of sleep on Sunday. Hurrah! Yet there’s still a lot of confusion about daylight saving time. For instance, many people still don’t know why we need to “save” daylight hours in the summer. The answer is a bit odd because it doesn’t really entail saving daylight.
Daylight saving time in the US started as an energy conservation trick during World War I and became a national standard in the 1960s.
The idea is that in the summer months, we shift the number of daylight hours we get into the evening. So if the sun sets at 8 pm instead of 7 pm, we’d presumably spend less time with the lights on in our homes at night, saving electricity. We agree it’s a pretty confusing name.
Anyway, with daylight savings time ending this Sunday, here are 7 more things you might like to know about “falling back”.
