Daylight Savings Time

Spring forward, Fall back...

Don't know about you, but I LOVE the day we "fall back"...although it means I'll go to work in the dark and generally come home in the dark for that one day it's like I've been given a gift.

The gift of being able to re-live one hour of my life (now, if it just happened when I wasn't sleeping I might be able to do something constructive with that hour)...

Don't forget to turn your clocks back tonight!

Now, why exactly do we do this?

Daylight Saving Time was instituted in the United States during World War I in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October. During World War II the federal government again required the states to observe the time change. Between the wars and after World War II, states and communities chose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time. In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the length of Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight Saving Time is four weeks longer since 2007 due to the passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005. The Act extended Daylight Saving Time by four weeks from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, with the hope that it would save 10,000 barrels of oil each day through reduced use of power by businesses during daylight hours. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to determine energy savings from Daylight Saving Time and based on a variety of factors, it is possible that little or no energy is saved by Daylight Saving Time.