As we all know, daylight savings time ended this past weekend. Clocks were turned back one hour on Saturday night, or if you are a night owl Sunday morning, as the official change took effect in the wee hours of Sunday morning. At Saturday evening mass, the priest paid for people who had to work the overnight shift, with an extra hour of work, to which my wife, a former nurse, shook her head in agreement. We will stay in standard time until March 8, 2026, or four months. There are calls from varied people, over the past few years, to end standard time and to have daylight savings time all year long. It is easy to look at your own situation and figure out what the effect would be, and perhaps many large population areas, such as the east coast, but the effect is different over the whole country.
The idea in changing to our current dates occurred through passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was intended to save energy, but later daylight had people moving around more in the evening, which may save electricity, but used more gasoline. The prior dates of last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October was established in 1966. Health care professionals seem to say that the change in time affects our body clock, which I am not going to disagree with, and can lead to varied health issues such as cardiac arrest.
Daylight hours for a place are related to its geographic relationship. For example, northern regions have more daylight hours for the summer than in the winter. The "24 hours" of daylight in the Nordic countries and Alaska are famous, but less talked about is the long winter night. Many years ago we camped at Pattison State Park, south of Superior, near the Fourth of July Holiday. Fireworks were that weekend night in Superior, and they started at 10:00 pm, which compared to a start of fireworks in the Madison area at 9:15 pm. Daylight savings time provides long summer nights, and makes sunrise more reasonable to the typical American. Those are the reasons Daylight savings time was instituted. Over the years, the time of start and end has changed.
People have changed as modernity has advanced. Most Americans, with the specialization of labor wake up between 6:00 and 6:30 am, but agrarian societies often work starting at sunrise. The industrial-professional economy has office hours often going to 5 pm. When working in Monona, I left for work before 7:30 am, and got home about 5:30 pm, hence except for weekends. My morning began as the sun had just risen, and would set well before I got home. I seldom would be able to peruse the yard in daylight hours for part of the winter.
Our timing of when daylight arrives is also affected by our relation to the time zone in which we are located. Eastern Wisconsin is near the eastern edge of the Central zone, while Michigan and Indiana are near the western edge of the Eastern time zone. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the sun rise in the western part of a time zone is later than in areas due east. Hence, this effect of longitude and latitude interplay to affect sun rise. Much of the UP of Michigan is in the Eastern time zone, including its most northern and western part--Isle Royale. Can you imagine a heavy cloud day and how dark it would feel in Houghton at almost 10:00 am in the morning if daylight savings time lasted all year? You may wonder when the day will brighten.
The following map indicates, to the half hour, when the latest the sun would rise if the nation went to all year Daylight savings time.
There seem to always be unintended consequences to varied actions. For example, take the reduction in standard time in 2005, in which electric energy reduction was offset by people using their cars more and gas consumption increased. More daylight meant that people felt more comfortable moving around and going places in the evening. Hence, I wonder what the unintended consequences of using DST all year would mean, particularly in places with sunrise showing up in midmorning? People tend to think of the locale they are in, and disregard other locations and how a time change may effect them. For some reason, people do not wish to go with standard time all year, which was in effect for all but a blip of history.
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