It’s that time of year again when multiple TWiT hosts (Leo included) complain about the clocks changing as North America moves from Standard Time on to Daylight Time. No one ever speaks up in defence of it, which surprises me as there were good reasons for its introduction.
Let’s use Petaluma, CA as an example. Here are the current sunrise and sunset times for various dates in 2022:
Now, let’s imagine that Petaluma decided to stay on PST (Winter time) all year round. The sunrise and sunset times would like like this:
Date
Sunrise
Sunset
Jan 1st (PST)
7.27 AM
5.01 PM
Apr 1st (PST)
5.55 AM
6.33 PM
Jul 1st (PST)
4.51 AM
7.37 PM
Nov 10th (PST)
6.46 AM
5.02 PM
The big change here is that sunrise in the spring/summer months continues to move earlier and earlier. For a good chunk of the summer months, sunrise occurs before 5.30 AM. This is daylight that the vast majority of the Petaluma population will still be asleep for. Isn’t it better to have that daylight moved to the evening, when many more people are awake to enjoy it?
Now let’s look at the other case - Petaluma decides to stay on PDT (Summer Time) all year round:
Date
Sunrise
Sunset
Jan 1st (PDT)
8.27 AM
6.01 PM
Apr 1st (PDT)
6.55 AM
7.33 PM
Jul 1st (PDT)
5.51 AM
8.37 PM
Nov 10th (PDT)
7.46 AM
6.02 PM
Look at those winter sunrise times - on January 1st the sun doesn’t rise until nearly half past eight! Adopting year-round PDT would mean that for six months of the year in Petaluma the sunrise was later than 7.30 AM.
I’m no expert in Petaluma’s opinion polls but if you presented these three sets of time options to people - unlabelled - and asked them which one they preferred, I’m pretty sure that they would pick the current PST/PDT option.
Hasn’t the Senate just passed the ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ this week? i.e. staying on DST? I understand the attraction of light evenings, but the school run in the dark won’t be fun.
I wonder how much thought has gone into all the IT systems in the US being changed to NOT implement clock changes?!
For me, the big pain is, I just get used to going with the dog in daylight in the morning, in March, then, suddenly, it is dark and I have to dig out the torch again.
It is the reverse, going into winter, i just get through the driving home from work, being blinded by the setting sun, so I can’t see the road properly and it is dusk, and suddenly, I’m being blinded again.
I hate that, I just want to go through those once each year, not twice, straight after each other.
Yes, apparently it was passed via a voice vote, unanimously. It still has to be approved by the House of Representatives and by the President before it would come into effect.
Then there are your brethren north of the border. Canada tries to allign itself with time changes so it will be interesting to see if it does so again this time.
As an aside, apparently this isn’t the first time that the US has tried all-year Daylight Saving Time - it was implemented in the mid-seventies as a reaction to the oil crisis. It didn’t last very long, as you can read in this US Today article - Permanent daylight saving time? History says America won't like change
As for how much work US IT systems will require to adapt to the change is anyone’s guess at the moment. I doubt that there is anyone in the US Senate who is qualified to make this kind of professional estimate.
I sympathise with your inconveniences in March and October.
The problem with moving to all-year-round daylight saving time is what it does for people living in the more northerly parts of a timezone. If the senate’s bill is enacted then, for example, people living in Seattle won’t have sunrise at the start of January until just before 9 AM. That will mean a lot of people, including schoolchildren, leaving their homes to go to work/school when it is still pitch black.
Here in the UK, we have this same sort of discussion about once every twenty years. It tends to get rejected on the grounds that it would cause massive inconvenience in the northern parts of Britain (Scotland in particular).
Between October/November and February, I go to work in the dark and drive home in the dark. I walk the dog mornings in the dark and evenings in the dark.
Some provinces have ALREADY passed the change to keep daylight hours, but they are conditional on the nearby US States doing likewise, to prevent confusion.
As for how much work US IT systems will require to adapt to the change is anyone’s guess at the moment. I doubt that there is anyone in the US Senate who is qualified to make this kind of professional estimate.
Not just US IT systems either, anything that interfaces? Could this end up being another Y2K?
Some interesting anomalies. What’s the history of a bit of Greenland being UTC, so 2 hours different to the majority of the country?
All modern systems (90s on) use UTC offsets and just need the relevant update to the configuration files. Microsoft, Apple and Google have released many such updates over the last several years, as the changeover dates around the world have changed or been abolished.
There wont be any Y2k thing concern again, if the law gets signed into law it wont go in effect until next year 2023 in the U.S. Its a simple fix and a update for all modern OS’s to push out a fix.
Here’s the BBC’s article concerning the Sunshine Protection Act that passed this week. It does appear that the act’s appearance in the Senate came as something as a surprise and so the defenders of the time change weren’t in the chamber to voice an objection.
I wonder how many provinces in Canada will be prepared to follow the US’ example? For northerly Canadian cities, such as Edmonton, this would mean sunrise in the depth of winter happening not much before ten o’clock …
In the winter, the length of daylight is such that I will either drive to work before dawn, or leave work after dark. As it is now, I drive home in the dark for most of December and January. If Sen. Rubio’s bill becomes law, I would arrive at work before dawn and have a bit of daylight in the evening.
I would prefer the latter. I do not see why being at work before dawn would be a problem. But for a period of my life, my job began early in the morning, so I was used to being at work well before sunrise.
For me, I get up in the dark, walk the dog in the dark, go to work in the dark, drive home from work in the dark, go with the dog in the dark and then go to bed in the dark…
At the moment, it is just approaching dawn, when I go with the dog and the sun in blinding me, when I drive to work. I’ll just get through this phase and the clocks will go back in a week or so and I’ll be walking the dog in the dark again, then, a week or so later, fighting the sun blinding me on the drive to work. All so that I can go to bed and put the blinds down, when it is still light!
In winter, it is the reverse, the drive home at night has just gone through being blinded by the setting sun to driving at dusk and the clocks change and I’m driving home again being blinded by the setting sun.
Changing from winter to summer time basically means making the commute to work more dangerous, just after I’ve gone through the dangerous period and it is safer again. And the commute home, when the summer to winter change takes place.
I’d be very happy, if they’d just stick with one or the other time - the EU voted for locking it, but they can’t decide on summer or winter time…
I think that the article does a pretty good job of highlighting the various complexities of the issues, particularly the ongoing situation in Ireland. Having the Republic of Ireland on one time zone and Northern Ireland in another would be logistically very challenging, and might even contravene the Good Friday Agreement.
