Ready to turn back time?
Daylight Saving Time, which began on March 10, ends on November 3. That means mornings will be lighter but evenings will be darker, as we move back an hour to standard time in South Florida.
Here’s what you need to know about the change:
Changes in the morning and evening
School and commuting: If the clocks go back an hour, it will get light earlier in the morning and dark earlier in the evening.
Sunrise and sunset: If we turn the clocks back at 2 a.m. on November 3, sunrise in Miami will be at 6:31 a.m. and sunset will be at 5:38 p.m.
Pro tip: Your phone and computer will do this automatically, but set your other clocks, including your oven and microwave, your watch, and decorative pieces, back one hour before you go to sleep on Saturday night, November 2.
How Your Sleep Is Affected
Loss and profit: Whether you like the time change or not, we all have one thing in common: we get an hour of sleep back this time. But we lose that extra hour of sleep again when we resume next spring.
A plan to ‘block’ the clock
Legislative action: Shouldn’t we be looking at the clock-clock movement going away? It’s true that the issue has been raised in state legislatures and Congress. In March 2023, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act. The Senate had passed the bill in March 2022, but the House of Representatives took no action. Rubio’s bill would make Daylight Saving Time permanent, meaning we wouldn’t turn the clocks back in the fall. “This ritual of changing the time twice a year is stupid,” Rubio, R-Florida, said last March. “Lock the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support.”
Background: U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Bradenton, first introduced the legislation in the House in 2018 and, along with Rubio, pushed the bill through their respective chambers of Congress. “There are tremendous health and economic benefits to making Daylight Saving Time permanent,” Buchanan said earlier this year. In 2018, Florida lawmakers agreed with Buchanan. The Florida Legislature passed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” but the permanent change to Daylight Saving Time has not yet happened. Why? Because the Uniform Time Act of 1966 requires Congress to approve the change in order for it to take effect.
Why did we tinker with the clock?
Save energy: Daylight Saving Time revolves around the desire to save energy by letting sunlight shine longer into the day during the spring and summer. A U.S. Department of Energy study found that extending Daylight Saving Time by four weeks in 2008 saved about 0.5 percent of the nation’s electricity per day, or 1.3 trillion watt-hours — enough to power 100,000 homes for an entire year.
Safety: Research has also shown that the extra hour of daylight results in safer roads, less crime and economic benefits.
Opposition: However, critics argue that the dark mornings can lead to sleepiness among commuters and parents taking their children to school, especially in the winter months.
Faults: Other concerns about daylight saving time included disruptions to farmers’ harvest schedules, disruption of religious practices based on solar and lunar time, and possible delays in adjusting computer systems that must switch over twice a year.
What are the origins and objections to the time change?
The beginning: One of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, is often credited with the idea of Daylight Saving Time. Franklin wrote an essay about it in 1784 as a way to save on lamp oil, while New Zealand entomologist George Hudson came up with the modern concept in 1895 so he could have more daylight to look for insects.
Wartime: But the idea didn’t catch on with American lawmakers until after World War I, and then as a wartime measure in World War II. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 made the time change an annual occurrence nationwide.
School: And while proponents want to stop changing the clocks twice a year, opponents — primarily parents and teachers — argue that permanent Daylight Saving Time means darker mornings and more safety risks for children going to school, whether they’re new teens driving or students walking to a bus stop or a nearby school.
