What to know about end of daylight saving time before changing clocks

If you’re awake very early Sunday, you’ll see the clocks change from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. Don’t be alarmed. It’s just daylight saving time ending. If you aren’t a night owl, you might wake up feeling more rested with an extra hour of sleep.

It’s a century-old temporal phenomenon that occurs on the first Sunday in November. The change allows for more daylight in the mornings from early November into March. In the spring, clocks jump ahead an hour to allow for more daylight in the evenings.

If you need help remembering what to do with your clocks, use the seasons as guidance: In fall, clocks “fall back” an hour. In spring, clocks “spring forward” an hour.

Here are some of your daylight saving time questions answered:

When do I need to turn the clocks back?

At 2 a.m. Nov. 5, clocks in most of North America and Europe as well as in Australia and New Zealand will fall back an hour. The next time you’ll need to change your clocks is in the spring, with the return of daylight saving time March 10. Daylight saving time always starts on the second Sunday in March.

Which U.S. states will not ‘fall back’?

After decades of chaos linked to communities setting different daylight saving rules, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 established a time change system - but it did allow states to choose whether they wanted to participate.

Hawaii and most of Arizona (excluding the Navajo Nation) remain on standard time while the rest of the country makes the shift. It means that for much of the year, the time difference between New York and Phoenix is three hours - but from November to March, Phoenix residents are just two hours behind.

Other U.S. territories including American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands remain on standard time year-round.

How did daylight saving time start?

Benjamin Franklin is the first person known to propose in 1784 changing sleep patterns to wake up with the sun. He saw it as a way to save money: Rely on sunshine for light instead of candles and oil lamps.

But Franklin can’t take credit for creating daylight saving time.

In 1895, daylight saving time was proposed by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, who suggested a two-hour fall back in October and a two-hour spring forward in March. It is thought that Hudson wanted the extra sunlight for his work collecting insects.

Daylight saving time was implemented in the United States to address train transportation coordination concerns in 1918. The Interstate Commerce Commission, in charge of railroad regulation at the time, created five time zones still in use today as the country prepared for World War I, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Daylight saving time was a wartime measure initially. It was then discontinued but came back during World War II.

After the war, some places didn’t want to give up daylight saving time, and as a result there were different times in different towns. People were unsure what time it was. Jurisdictions chose whether to keep the change and when to adjust the clocks, creating a patchwork system for about two decades.

To solve the wrinkles in time, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was created: It set dates and times for the twice yearly ritual. The act remains the law of the land today.

Is the U.S. ending daylight saving time?

That is unlikely to happen anytime soon, though there was a relatively recent effort to set one constant time. In March 2022, the Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would have kept daylight saving time year-round and eliminated standard time from November to March. The plan did not win House approval, and there has been no major movement on the legislation since.

According to a 2021 survey by the Economist/YouGov Poll, 63 percent of Americans want to eliminate the semiannual tradition - 77 percent of people older than 65 favor ending the ritual. Just 48 percent prefer daylight saving time over standard time.

Allyson Chiu and Michael S. Rosenwald contributed to this report.