KTSM News – What would change if daylight saving time became permanent?

(NEXSTAR) — Clocks have officially jumped ahead an hour in most of the U.S. as daylight saving time begins. If some lawmakers have their way, this could even be the last time the country has to change its clocks. 

Most of the recent state and federal efforts to end the seasonal practice have aimed to make daylight saving time permanent, a move polls have shown Americans prefer. (Health and sleep experts, however, prefer permanent standard time.)

We’ve observed permanent daylight saving time before on multiple occasions, and it was not as widely appreciated as recent polling may suggest — but more on that in a moment. 

Should Sunday be the last time the U.S. changes its clocks and we transition to year-round daylight saving, the most obvious differences you would notice would be sunrise and sunset. 

When you woke up on Sunday, hopefully a few hours after daylight saving time began at 2 a.m., you likely noted the difference between the time on your phone and the amount of sun outside. If you live in Los Angeles, for example, the sun rose at around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. Now that daylight saving time is here, the sun did not rise until about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. On Saturday, you saw the sun start to set around 6:10 p.m. But on Sunday, sunset will occur at 7:12 p.m.

Summer would be like any other summer in which we’ve observed daylight saving time. In Los Angeles, that would mean the earliest sunrises are around 5:40 a.m. and the latest sunsets are around 8:10 p.m.

It’s the fall and winter months that would be impacted the most if we observed daylight saving time all year. 

Consider an average winter day: The sun rises earlier in the morning and sets earlier at night. The latest sunrise in Los Angeles, for example, is around 7 a.m. while the earliest sunset is around 4:45 p.m. If we switched to permanent daylight saving time, the sun would come up as late as 8 a.m. but set no earlier than 5:43 p.m.

That may sound enticing, especially when early sunsets can feel so dark.

The table below shows the latest sunrises and earliest sunsets across multiple U.S. cities during the fall months as well as what those times would switch to on permanent daylight saving time. 

The research — and history — are stacked against permanent daylight saving time, however. The U.S. tried the practice multiple times in the 1900s, only to quickly transition out of it.

In the 1910s, it was enacted as a wartime measure and repealed after a year. It came back in 1942 due to World War II, setting off decades of states and cities deciding what time to observe without much guidance. 

There was a brief reprieve from the chaos when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, formalizing when the country (minus Hawaii and most of Arizona) was on daylight saving time and standard time.

Then, in 1973, the U.S. was in the throes of an energy crisis, prompting President Richard Nixon to sign an emergency daylight saving time bill into law. The year-round daylight saving time was well-liked, initially, but safety concerns soon changed public opinion of the move. In 1974, the U.S. returned to the bi-annual changing of the clock that we know today.

Four related bills — two to enact permanent daylight saving time and two to give states the power to observe it year-round —  have been introduced in Congress this year. All three remain in committees as of early March. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in several states are considering their own legislation. States can only request to observe standard time year-round (only two states have done this), and they cannot opt for year-round daylight saving time. In most cases, the aforementioned bills would put the state on daylight saving time permanently only if Congress would allow it.

As for now, though, our clocks are set to “fall back” an hour on November 2.

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