2017-03-17

Author: Mary Knapp

It is that time of year again, and time to apply the phrase: “Spring forward; fall back”. We are referring, of course, to the onset of Daylight Saving Time. Despite the name, we aren’t really saving daylight. We are essentially switching the time when the daylight occurs. The idea of Daylight Saving was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, but wasn’t widely used until World War II. The current application became standard with an amendment of Uniform Time Act of 1966, which became effective in 2007. Since then, in the spring, officially, at 1:59 a.m. the clocks are switched to 3:00 am instead of 2:00 am on the 2nd Sunday in March. Thus time switch occurs earliest on the East Coast and latest in California. In the United States, Daylight Saving time is NOT observed in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the eastern time zone of Indiana, and Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation).

Mary Knapp, Weather Data Library
mknapp@ksu.edu