Mental Note: Here’s When Clocks Go Back and Daylight Saving Time Ends in NYS

The enjoyment of temperatures in the 70s and spending time outdoors in the sunshine after work is quickly coming to an end. Forecasters say warmer than average temperatures in mid-October are about to come to cease this weekend (at least for now), when cooler air enters the region on Sunday. Meanwhile, the days are getting shorter as we move through fall and like it or not, Daylight Saving Time is about to come to an end.

So when does Daylight Saving Time end, forcing us to move clocks back by one hour?

This year, Daylight Saving Time officially ends on Sunday, November 7, at 2:00 a.m., when we move the clocks back by 1 hour and go back to Standard Time. As a convenience, most people traditionally change their clocks before they go to bed on Saturday night; however as we have become more technology dependent, there are fewer clocks to change in the spring and fall. Most clocks today are connected to the internet so they change automatically. Still, there are plenty of clocks that hang on the wall and live inside your car, that still need to be physically changed.

Some Daylight Saving Time Background

Daylight Saving Time was enacted to save energy and cut down on crime. Benjamin Franklin is considered the 'Father of DST' as he first proposed the concept in 1784, according to David Prerau, author of "Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time" (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005). Franklin concluded that the world would save energy if the daylight hours were an hour earlier according to official time. The concept was that people would spend more time outside and use less resources to light up their homes. Even today, the science community argues over whether or not DST saves energy.

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Germany was the first country to adopt DST as a way to conserve fuel during World War I. In the United States, communities decided whether or not to adopt the time change and as a result, there was mayhem as some counties in a given state would abide by the concept and others did not. This caused a major confusion as times were different as people traveled across county lines.  In 1966, Congress enacted the Uniform Time Act which required that each individual state would determine if they would follow Daylight Saving Time, and it required that the entire state had to follow the protocol. Today, two states, Arizona and Hawaii don't participate in the time saving measure. The time change used to be shorter until Congress voted to move up the date back in 2007. Since then, DST begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

On Sunday, November 7, sunrise will be at 6:44 a.m. and will set at 4:45 p.m. in our area. We'll have 10 hours and 4 minutes of official daylight time. The shortest day of 2021 will be on Tuesday, December 21st. Sunrise will be at 7:27 a.m. and sunset will be at 4:30 p.m.. The amount of sunlight on the 21st will be 9 hours 2 minutes and 52 seconds. The good news is that beginning on December 22, the days will gradually begin to get longer as we head toward Daylight Saving Time in the spring, which will return on Sunday, March 13th, 2022, at 2:00 a.m..

For the record, Daylight Saving Time obviously doesn't give us more daylight hours in a given day. It simply is intended to place the daylight hours at a more convenient time of the day, based on when people traditionally go to bed and wake up in the morning. Also, it's actually called Daylight Saving Time, and not Daylight Savings Time.