Daylight Savings Time ends tonight

November 2, 2024 • 12:30 pm

Don’t forget to set your clocks BACK one hour before you go to bed tonight, as Daylight Savings time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday. It’s a pity that it doesn’t end on Monday morning, as then you can sleep an hour later on a work day!

We need to get rid of this stupid time adjustment. In fact, two American states do not observe this time change. Can you name them? Try guessing, but don’t spoil for others by putting their names in the comments. Just say “got it” or “didn’t get it.” The answer is here.

41 thoughts on “Daylight Savings Time ends tonight”

    2. No, Daylight Saving Time ended last Sunday. It just took the U.S. and Canada a week to catch up with the rest of us here in Europe.

  2. Ummm. Daylight Savings Time ENDS overnight tonight, not begins. Your instruction is correct though…set clicks back an hour….which is the important bit. Thanks for the reminder!

  3. One of the news sites I usually read had this as a trivia question. It was “State ‘X’ doesn’t observe daylight savings time. What is the other state?” It was a multiple choice, and the wrong answers in their offering were Maine, Texas and Alaska. I chose the correct answer.

    So I was primed for this quiz.

  6. My mother, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, used to mock the habit of moving the clock twice a year. I have heard the stupidity described as cutting off the top of a blanket and sewing it on to the bottom.

    Fortunately, I live in one of the two states that doesn’t participate in the foolishness and I know the identity of the other one.

  7. Every year, I cannot remember which way to adjust time. The obvious solution
    is to hedge my bets by putting half the clocks forward and half of them back.

    2. For at least 30 years I’ve had an Atomic Alarm Clock, set to adjust for Daylight Savings Time. Since then, all that’s left to change is my Timex and the electric stove. Best time-saving investment ever!

  8. Got it!

    But one of the states has a portion that DOES observe DST. No only that but a portion of that section has a section that does not!

    Edit: At least that was the case when I visited a few years ago.

  9. Extension of the quiz:
    Wify and I live in one NDST state. Daughter and grandsons live in the other NDST state. (Also a son at home with us). We are not in the same time zone, but, conveniently, we are always the same number of time zones apart. Where are we?

    1. From my wife’s stories of her work in Nunavut, I don’t think they observe any time at all.

  11. Here in British Columbia the town of Creston doesn’t observe DST (as Frau Katze’s link says). So twice a year the Highways Department goes out and moves the sign which says “Change your watches, new time zone coming up” to the other side of the town.

  12. Here in Europe, we changed hours last week.Twice a year, I do my usual rant about the silliness, stupidity and danger (for health) of this ridiculous change of time. See this>, for instance.

    The EU parliament was all ready to get rid of it (keeping summer time only, as I recall), but then covid came along so they all went on vacation. Jerks!

  15. I laugh at the people who complaining about the health risks of moving the clocks +/- one hour twice a year but will hop on a plane and travel across multiple time zones 3 or 4 times per year.

    1. I suppose, at least from the standpoint of motor vehicle crashes, I know I’m perfectly safe to drive after a time shift I chose for my own benefit. It’s all those other bad drivers who cause crashes when they, too, have to change their clocks. (When I travel, I’m not exposed to other time-warped drivers. At clock-change times, I am. Which proves Hell is other people, to take the quotation out of context.).

      Maybe the aggregate risk is low when it’s only the jet-lagged air travelers impaired, and becomes undetectable when spread around the country and averaged over a year of haphazard travel. Only when the impairment is imposed on everyone all at once might the bump in crashes become distinguishable from background noise.

  16. I met a woman from some part of Indiana which, at the time, had a crazy mishmash of different rules for time. In the early 2000s certain counties of Indiana observed Central Standard Time with daylight savings, some had Central Standard Time without daylight savings, and the eastern counties had Eastern Standard Time with daylight savings. This lady lived in a uniquely annoying and confusing part of the state. Within walking distance of her home, there were three different systems of reckoning time. Even just to call a friend to suggest meeting for dinner at 7:00, one had to specify which 7:00. The locals would always add a clarifier such as “7:00 Chicago time”.

      1. And of course Newfoundland is a half hour ahead of the Maritimes, themselves an hour ahead of everyone else.
        When television networks announced the time when shows would air from Network Central, they would always say, “Tune into the news at noon. Half-hour later in Newfoundland.” This inspired a cartoon of a bearded raggedy fanatic with a sandwich board saying, “Repent! World ends at midnight!” Then in small print at the bottom: (half hour later in Newfoundland.)

        (This is your monthly dose of quirky Canadian cultural artefacts.)

  18. This reminder is useful, regardless of who (or who doesn’t) receives the message. Chronological alignment is hard, but important.

  19. I set the alarm clock, meal and medication times back by one hour, and generally try and ignore the change as much as I can. I am retired so it’s easy, as most of the time I don’t have to deal with businesses.

  20. One day the whiners will win and we won’t change the clocks by one measly hour twice a year. Those same whiners will then complain about less sun in the summer and darker mornings in the winter.

  21. I’m always surprised at how upset people get by an hour’s change twice a year, which people generally adjust to by the end of the first day, which is always a Sunday so it has minimal impact. Why complain about getting an extra useable hour of sunlight on summer evenings, rather than a useless hour of sunlight at 4 a.m.? Why complain that we have sunrise in midwinter by 8 a.m. instead of having to travel to work or school in the dark because the sun doesn’t rise until 9? The pettiness of the whingeing is ridiculous.

    Of course people in southern-latitude states like Arizona and Hawaii don’t need it — they’re close enough to the equator that the reduced variation in day-length through the year doesn’t make it worthwhile. In fact I’m surprised the other states on the lower tier haven’t done the same. Likewise, if you’re far enough north (looking at you, Yukon and Nunavut) the variance in day-length is so extreme between summer and winter that there’s equally no point, because you’re going to spend most of each day in sunlight or darkness whatever the clock says. It’s the temperate-latitude middle, where most of us live, that benefits.

    That hoary old saying about cutting a foot off a blanket and re-sewing it somewhere else just betrays a lack of thought from people who haven’t understood the concept. No one claims the blanket gets any longer. It’s simply being shifted up or down a bit so it’s providing cover where it’s needed, instead of being pointlessly bunched up where it isn’t.

    1. I agree with you. The mornings just now at 43 degrees north latitude are terribly dark and I love the long summer evenings during DST. I am looking forward to setting the clocks back, er, right now in fact. I don’t mind that it’ll be dark at supper time. In these latitudes it pretty much would be anyway.

      Here’s to changing the clocks twice a year. Besides, it reminds us to check the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

    2. Then some golf course operators in Florida start whining that the time should be set 15 degrees to the East forever, so that they can benefit by cashing in one extra hour golfing time. Which is fine by me, but they drag California with them, California drags Oregon and Washington, and Washington drags British Columbia, because someone in Silicon Valley might expect for their BC affiliate to be open for business at the same time they are.

      Such attempts were made before, for various reasons. The initiatives failed after a couple of years because it so happens that people don’t like to send kids to school before dawn. Too many car accidents.

      My friend has a factory job. She agreed to go to work for 6AM start, thinking it’s reasonable. But really, she is showing up at 4:48 average by the Sun in summer, and waking up before 4AM, so that s(#ews up her circadian rhythm big time.

      I don’t say we should go back to local solar time, but we should mind it when it comes to activities such as sleep and meals.

  22. In one of my jobs I dealt with colleagues in various parts of the USA, and with subcontractors in the UK, France and Singapore. When I phoned, as well as the time zones, I had to remember that people in the USA took lunch before noon, that my UK contacts aligned their hours with their principals in Thailand, that the French took a two hour lunch. I have forgotten the details of Singapore.
    When I rule the world, I shall decree that everyone is on GMT. Then I shall have to remember only local foibles.

  23. In many ways the debate about summer time is so last century. We have the technology in computers and cell phones that we could adopt one standard time throughout the time zone and allow businesses and organisations to flex their opening and closing times to suit their practical purposes.

    So if it makes sense for schools to observe sunrise or sunset, let them do so. Same with businesses. They can inform their ‘customers’ about ‘open hours’ by push notifications.

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