What is Daylight Saving Time? Why do we change our clocks? Are we losing or gaining an hour? We have everything you need to know!
Every March and November we change our clocks forward or back to accommodate the sun’s schedule. In 2018, we move the clocks ahead one hour on March 11 and we move them back one hour on Nov. 4. That’s where we get the expression “Spring forward, Fall back.”
Daylight Saving is designed to give people more daylight in the evening when it’s warmer, which is why it takes place in the spring. Not everyone observes Daylight Saving Time, though; Arizona, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not observe Daylight Saving Time and will remain on Standard Time while everyone else makes the change.
This year, on Saturday March 10 you will want to turn all of your clocks ahead, or forward, one hour before bed. The time change officially happens at 2 a.m. local time on March 11. If you’re not staying up to see the time change on your digital devices like phones and cable boxes, you need to change your manually operated clocks (car stereos, alarm clocks, ovens, microwaves) before bed. For those of you that want to see it happen, you will see your cable box and cell phone go from 1:59am to 3 a.m. in the span of a few seconds and it’s kind of mind boggling. Keep in mind some phones might need a restart in order to process the time change.
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Daylight Saving is the time change that people notice the most because many people really notice that lost hour. To combat the effects, you can go to sleep a little earlier on Saturday to make up for the lost hour on Sunday, but in reality it takes a few days to really recover and adapt to the new time.