No, I Don’t Think We’ll Ever Do Year Round Daylight Saving Time

It's that dreaded weekend when we engage in the ritual of moving our clocks ahead an hour. The lousy part in the spring is we "lose" an hour of sleep. Don't worry, we'll get that hour back in November of this year. Of course, the rough part about the fall time change is it gets darker earlier. Yet, even with all the talk of year-round Daylight Saving Time, I don't think we're going to stop changing the clocks anytime soon.

Why? Because I don't think our politicians in Washington DC have the stomach to upset the apple cart, and messing with what we've used for years will leave some people upset and others happy.

When we change the clocks every spring and fall, we're taking an hour of daylight and moving it around. For example, when we turn the clocks ahead an hour on Saturday night, we're taking that first hour of daylight and making it an hour later, so we get that hour of daylight in the evening. In the fall, when we turn the clocks back we're taking that last hour of daylight and moving it back to the morning, thus it gets darker earlier.

That's where the arguments start because some people think kids shouldn't be waiting for buses or walking to school in the dark. Not to mention some folks would rather not have to head to work when it's dark out. That's directly at odds with the folks who would prefer it not to get dark so early.

Now let's talk time zones. Where you live in a given time zone impacts how long your summer nights are and how short your winter days are. Growing up in Chicago, which is fairly close to the Eastern Time Zone, winter nights come early, like 4:30 PM. And even the extra hour of Daylight Saving Time only gets you evening light till 8:45 PM. Any change to year-round Daylight Saving Time or staying on Standard Time year-round is going to have implications for sunrise and sunset times depending on where you are in that time zone.

That's the problem, there are only four time zones in the continental United States, and if you want to give people more light at night in the winter without having the sun come up at 8:30 AM or 9:30 AM in some places, then you need to re-jigger the entire way we do time zones. That itself will turn some folks off from making any changes.

Cartographer Andy Woodruff has created handy interactive maps detailing sunrise and sunset times based on how we manipulate time. So it's always fun to plug details in and see how staying on Daylight Saving Time or staying on Standard Time impacts sunrise and sunset times. Unfortunately, for many parts of the country, there doesn't seem to be an easy solution.

Hi latest creation, Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool, is a map of the United States that lets users plug in what they believe is the latest reasonable sunrise time and earliest reasonable sunset time along with letting the user choose what's more important to them sunrise, sunset, or both being equally important.

When I played around with the map I found that when you make sunrise and sunset time equally important and make 7:00 AM the latest reasonable sunrise time, and 6:00 PM the earliest reasonable sunset time, much of America could stay on standard time year-round, yet pockets of the country would always be on Daylight Saving Time, and there are three corridors where people still needed to switch between DST and Standard Time.

If we all agreed that it's OK to be dark until 9:00 AM in places, and the earliest the sun will set is 7:00 PM, we could move to Daylight Saving Time year-round.

If we all agreed that the latest reasonable sunrise would be 6:00 AM, and the earliest sunset would be 5:00 PM, then we could just stay on Standard Time year-round.

Of course, Woodruff's data goes a little deeper if you care to get into the minutia of it all. I'm taking a simple look at the maps based on the data I plugged in without digging into exactly how these changes would impact us in Sedalia, Kansas CIty, St. Louis, or other places.

Yet it illustrates nicely why I think our politicians aren't in any hurry to move on from the status quo of changing the clocks twice a year. Whatever they choose, some constituents won't be happy, and politicians dislike that more than anything else.

Oh, by the way, if you're reading this on Friday, March 8, or Saturday, March 9, 2024. Turn your clocks ahead one hour before bed on Saturday night!

You can read more of Rob's thoughts on the subject by reading "Year Round Daylight Saving Time Will Change Sunrise in Sedalia"