Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
It’s almost time to fall back, and not a moment too soon.
Daylight Saving Time ends in the very early morning on Sunday, Nov. 2. We will set our clocks—at least the ones that don’t automatically update themselves—back an hour, reclaiming the hour we sprang ahead earlier in the year.
Some people will surely take the opportunity to get an extra hour of sleep, and more power to them. I probably will not be one of those people, as I have two cats who can’t read even a digital clock.
But there also will be people who will bemoan the earlier sunsets, starting around 5:30 p.m. right after the time change and creeping to as early as 5:11 p.m. on Dec. 3. Some people are so opposed to Standard Time that they want to outlaw it. Five iterations of the “Sunshine Protection” act have been introduced in Congress between 2018 and 2025, proposing to make Daylight Saving Time year-round across the entire country. The 2021 version passed the Senate but failed in the House of Representatives.
I get it, especially for people who have a significant commute home. It can be depressing getting out of work with the sun already down, driving 30 minutes as it gets darker out. Fortunately, the time change doesn’t increase car crashes. A 2010 study in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health found that neither the switch to or from Daylight Saving Time increased crashes.
I will go a step further than noting that the time change isn’t actively dangerous. It is good, actually. Because the earlier sunsets come along with earlier sunrises.
I really start noticing sunrises getting later and later in the morning in mid-September, when they start pushing after 7:15. In Hutchinson, the last sunrise before the time change will come at 7:57 a.m. Without the time change, the latest sunrise in Hutchinson would be 8:48 a.m. on New Year’s Day.
Without the time change, students at most Hutchinson elementary schools, which start at 7:50 a.m., would be getting to school before sunrise from Oct. 25 to March 9, about 4.5 months, about half of the school year. With the time change, that’s limited to about one week at the end of October.
At least we have it better in that regard than the 30 residents of Fortuna, N.D. In the far northwest corner of North Dakota, on the western edge of the Central Time Zone, Fortuna gets sunrises after 8 a.m. from Oct. 5 to Nov. 1, Nov. 12 to Feb. 12, and March 9 to 18, even with the time change. If the Sunshine Protection Act passed, sunrise in Fortuna would be at 9:48 a.m. for a few days before and after New Year’s.
So curse the early sunsets if you must, but try to appreciate the morning sunshine.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.