As summer comes to an end, we can feel the days getting shorter and the sun setting earlier. This weekend, Chicago will hit a milestone that signals the arrival of fall and the approaching of daylight saving time. It’s the final 7 p.m. sunset for the next seven months, and it’s a reminder that the days will only continue to get shorter.
According to NBC 5 Meteorologist Alicia Roman, the last 7 p.m. sunset will occur this weekend on Sunday, September 15th. This marks the end of an era as we won’t see a 7 p.m. sunset until March of 2025. As we approach the end of September, the sun will set even earlier at 6:32 p.m. and by the end of November, we will see a sunset as early as 4:30 p.m. This is all due to the upcoming time change for daylight saving time.
So, when do we change our clocks? According to federal law, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday of November in most of the U.S. This year, the date falls on November 3rd, when clocks will roll back one hour at 2 a.m. that morning.
But what exactly is daylight saving time? It’s a changing of the clocks that typically occurs in the spring and fall, often referred to as “spring forward” and “fall back.” Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. On these days, clocks either shift forward or backward one hour.
However, it wasn’t always this way. In the past, clocks used to spring ahead on the first Sunday in April and remain that way until the final Sunday in October. But a change was put in place to allow children to trick-or-treat in more daylight. In the United States, daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks, running from early-to-mid March to the beginning of November in states that observe it.
Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of daylight saving time when he wrote in a 1784 essay about saving candles and saying, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” However, this was meant more as satire than a serious consideration. The first country to adopt daylight saving time was Germany on May 1, 1916, during World War I as a way to conserve fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon after.
The United States didn’t adopt daylight saving time until March 19, 1918. However, it was unpopular and abolished after World War I. It wasn’t until February 9, 1942, when Franklin Roosevelt instituted a year-round daylight saving time, which he called “wartime.” This lasted until September 30, 1945. Daylight saving time didn’t become standard in the US until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that clocks would advance one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and turn back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.
States could still exempt themselves from daylight saving time, as long as the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round daylight saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 in order to conserve energy.
So, when will daylight saving time resume? In 2025, it will resume on March 9th, with clocks springing forward then. Currently, nearly every U.S. state observes daylight saving time, with the exceptions of Arizona (although some Native American tribes do observe DST in their territories) and Hawaii. U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.
As we approach the end of September, we also approach the beginning of fall. Although meteorological fall begins on September 1st, the autumnal equinox, or astronomical fall, is on September 22nd. According to the Old Farmers Almanac, “The autumnal equinox is an astronomical event that marks the start of autumn (or ‘fall’).” After the autumnal equinox
