Shortest Weekend of the Year: Time to Spring Ahead

MADISON, Wis. (CIVIC MEDIA) – It’ll stay darker longer in the morning and lighter later in the evening, here’s why we change the clocks forward.

Yep, it’s the time of the year where we lose an hour of sleep Saturday night. At 2 AM Sunday clocks will roll ahead to 3 AM. Phones will automatically do this for us but those traditional clocks on the wall, you’ll need to adjust them. It’s also a good time to change out the batteries on smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, too.

The sudden shift in time may make us sleepy and affect our moods… so try to start adjusting your sleep schedule now. Doctors recommend going to sleep 15 minutes earlier days prior to the shift in time. This will help your internal body clock make changes easier, having you less fatigued and irritable.

We do DST for a few reasons, it was meant to save energy consumption and align with the sunlight better. Meaning less time turning the lights on at home. It essentially should save us some money on utility bills.

Hawaii doesn’t observe this because they are located much closer to the equator, with little change in their sunrise and sunsets. In Arizona, they use the extreme heat as a reason to keep the time stuck earlier, avoiding the sunshine sticking around later into the evening.

But here in Wisconsin, we change our clocks to fit better with the rise and fall of the sun. In summer, Earth’s northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun more, allowing for longer days.

If we never changed the time ahead, and stuck to standard time all year, sunrise in July would be at 4 a.m. and sunset would be earlier at 7:30 p.m. Seems that no one wants the sun shining through their window that early every summer morning. So we simply moved it to 5 a.m. Instead, some would prefer the light stick around longer after work.

So we shift up an hour to have it make more sense with our daily lives that go by the clock. This extra hour of sun in the summer evenings, especially allows outdoor enthusiasts to catch more time outside in the woods or on the water.

But it all started with saving money and energy. Ben Franklin suggested it back in the 18th Century. He had a whole equation on how to save candles and burn less.

“183 nights between 20 March and 20 September times 7 hours per night of candle usage equals 1,281 hours for a half year of candle usage. Multiplying by 100,000 families gives 128,100,000 hours by candlelight. Each candle requires half a pound of tallow and wax, thus a total of 64,050,000 pounds.”

It wasn’t adapted then, it took until WWI in 1918 for it to happen. Agriculture was originally opposed as it threw off the animals and cows milking. Since they are creatures that rise and fall with the sun, sort of like humans. But as farmers got used to this shift, harnessing the daylight for their outdoor work became a benefit, especially in the Midwest.

Daylight Saving Time was enacted again in WWII called “war time” to save on energy. When the war was over, it stopped.

20 years later, the Uniform Time Act standardized it in 1966. This when it was mandated across the country. Only about 60 years ago!

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended it by a few weeks. It used to happen the first Sunday in April each year, this moved it ahead to the second Sunday in March. It also extended it longer into November now. The shift originally was the the last Sunday in October. But that moved to the first Sunday in November, to allow kids the extra hour of daylight to trick-or-treat safely on Halloween.

Then in 2022, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to make DST permanent. However, the House failed to vote on The Sunshine Act, so nothing happened. There were similar efforts in 2023 that also failed to advance.

Trump has tweeted he wants to put an end to Daylight Saving Time and make it Standard Time year-round.

Supporters of ending DST argue that it disrupts sleep patterns and has negative health effects.

If daylight savings time change is canceled, do you prefer

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2025

A YouGov poll from 2022 said that two-thirds of Americans wanted to end time changes.

According to most research, Americans do not save a significant amount of energy. Some studies suggest it’s slightly higher due to increased use of air conditioning during the day. However, climate change remains a factor with rising temperatures across the globe.