SEATTLE — Washingtonians, like the vast majority of Americans, will have to turn their clocks back in a few days as daylight saving time comes to an end.
Starting on Sunday, Nov. 3, American clocks will "fall back" an hour at 2 a.m. — resulting in an extra hour of sleep.
The only two U.S. states where people will not have to adjust their clocks are Arizona and Hawaii. Both of these states rely on a loophole in a 58-year-old federal law that requires states to stay on daylight saving time.
The Uniform Time Act, passed by Congress in 1966, allows states to opt out of daylight saving time, which Hawaii and most of Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Nation, have done. However, doing the opposite of opting out of standard time and staying in daylight saving time is not allowed under federal law.
In Washington, despite the state legislature passing a law in 2019 for permanent daylight saving time, it cannot go into effect without the approval of Congress, which has consistently failed to bring the issue to a full vote.
A new measure was filed in the state senate for 2024, aiming to keep the state in Pacific Standard Time year-round. The bill is authored by Sen. Mike Padden. The bill failed to pass and died in committee.
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the “Sunshine Protection Act” in March 2022, but the House has not taken up the issue. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) frequently reintroduce the bill in their respective chambers, but the bill usually dies before it comes close to becoming law. The Senate and House versions of the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023, which were both introduced in March, failed.
Why was daylight saving time created?
The practice has been implemented in some form since World War I when Germany originally introduced it to conserve power and energy by extending daylight hours.
The Standard Time Act in 1918 was the first introduction of daylight saving time to American clocks. The temporary measure, which once held the nickname "wartime," lasted from spring to fall and was intended to cut energy costs during World War I. The act is also responsible for the five time zones still in place today.
The Department of Transportation was created and given regulatory power over time zones and daylight saving time in 1966. In order to correct confusing and alternating time zones, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 sought a nationwide standard for daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.
Few changes have happened since then. Most recently, daylight saving time was extended by a few weeks in 2005 when former President George Bush changed the law. It is now observed from the second Sunday in March until the first Sunday in November.
The U.S. has previously implemented daylight saving time year-round twice, once in World War II for fuel conservation and once in 1974 as a "trial run" during an energy crisis.
While there is some belief that daylight saving time reduces electricity consumption, traffic and crime, two studies, one performed in 1975 and one in 2005, when DST was extended, revealed that much of the changes in energy consumption, traffic and crime were "statistically insignificant." The 2005 study found that each day of extended daylight saving time lowered total national electricity consumption by 0.5%.
TEGNA's Melissa Hernandez De La Cruz contributed to this report.
