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Daylight Saving Time Ends This Weekend; Set Your Clocks Back One Hour on Halloween Night

By Nathan Ham

It’s that time of the year to “fall back” as Daylight Saving Time comes to an end at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Make sure you set your clocks back one hour on Halloween night before you go to bed. The time change is also a good reminder to change the batteries in your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors heading into the winter months.

Daylight Saving Time was first observed in the United States in 1918 and became an official federal government practice as part of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Daylight Saving Time was extended by Congress in 1975 as a way to conserve energy. The switch back to standard time used to happen in October, however, that was changed in 2007 to push the time change to November.

48 of the 50 states utilize the Daylight Saving Time format. Hawaii does not participate and most of the state of Arizona does not participate either, except for a small portion in the northeast corner of the state. The United States territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also do not participate in Daylight Saving Time.

People typically associate the time change in November as a sign that winter is closing in. The days will have less sunlight, meaning much cooler temperatures, and it will start getting darker quicker in the evening. Sunset on Sunday will be at 5:29 p.m. and will continue to happen earlier each day until December 10 when sunset will be at 5:11 p.m. Sunset times will start increasing again after that, even though the days will still continue to get shorter until the Winter Solstice on December 21.