What Daylight Are We Saving? Time Data Series

Welcome to Daylight Savings Recovery Week – a period of days when most of the world expresses shock, dismay, despair, and the other 5 stages of grief about waking up an hour early and generally being cranky.

Like so many things in 2024, the act of saving daylight (whatever that might actually mean) has become increasingly polarizing (and somewhat partisan) with both citizens and politicians clamoring for an end to the madness of changing our clocks twice a year.

• Colorado is awaiting federal approval on a bill signed in 2022 that would keep daylight savings time permanently in place.

• A new bill in California would permanently end daylight savings time.

• In the US Congress, a senator from Oklahoma got a bill passed in the Senate that would put an end to DST, but it wasn’t taken up in the house.

• Meanwhile, over in the House, another Republican – from Utah this time – reintroduced a bill to make DST permanent, or at least allow states to do so if they chose.

• In all, there are 500 bills (between state and federal legislatures) currently in play that relate to the abolishment of, or standardization of, daylight saving time.

I’m sharing this by way of making two points:

1. Lots of people have:

   1. an opinion on daylight saving time

   2. the authority to try to change it

   3. the desire to change it now

      
      

2. There is no consistency, no unified plan on how to do this.

The result of this can be described by words ranging from “absurd” to “disastrous.”

“Absurd” because it’s entirely possible that, in the current situation, one state would abolish DST, while another would permanently stay on it. Meaning you could travel from Ohio at 6:00 am (with a bill currently under consideration to remain on DST), drive 1 hour to Pennsylvania where it would be 8:00 am (because they’ve continued to change their clocks seasonally); and arrive 4 hours later in New York, where the time is… no, not 12:00 pm, but instead, it would be 11:00 am.

I’m probably exaggerating a little because, as I understand it, states can pass all the DST bills they want but it will require a federal ruling to allow that law to take effect. Or something like that. I’m neither a lawyer nor a politician so I’m not 100% sure.

Let’s face it, it’s 2024. The push to remote work that started with the pandemic has caused many of us to feel that time is mostly meaningless. Things get done, people are awake (or asleep) whenever it suits them, and the number on the clock has less bearing on our lives than it once did.

Nevertheless, the current rash of polarized opinions related to changing daylight savings time could make life (or at least certain times of day) very hard for folks who observe solar-centric, rather than clock-centric, times.

I’ve been writing about my work using PHP Zmanim, which helps developers easily incorporate and display so-called “Jewish” times (zmanim) into their websites. But here’s a quick primer for those who haven’t followed along:

It’s difficult to understate the importance of accurate time calculations on the Jewish religious day, week, and life. It figures into everything from when a fast starts and ends; to when it’s too late (or too early) to say certain prayers; to the moment when simply owning (let alone eating) bread is forbidden.

“What time are afternoon prayers?” To understand that, we have to first understand what defines “day” (versus “night”); how to understand what demarcation separates “morning” from “afternoon”; how to effectively divide the day into parts; and so much more.

Here’s a sampling of sun-specific times:

• Before sunrise, (the moment when the top edge of the disk of the sun touches the horizon) comes “dawn”, the moment when light can first be seen shining over the horizon. No prayers can happen before dawn.

• At a specific time between dawn and sunrise, it’s permissible to put on tallit and tefillin.

• a “seasonal hour” is determined by taking the amount of daylight (from sunrise to sunset) and dividing it into 12 equal parts.

• Afternoon prayers cannot be said until 6.5 seasonal hours after sunrise.

My point is not to bog you down with complex (and, to the non-religious reader, seemingly whimsical) calculations. My point is that there is a significant population of folks (a rough estimate is 3.1 million people) for whom this DOES matter. And that doesn’t even begin to consider that the 5 salah (Muslim prayers) times are equally dependent on the sun.

How does the current kerfluffle about DST factor in? let’s consider (all times are given for my location in Cleveland Ohio. Your Sunlight May Vary!):

• On Nov 5, the, time “falls” back – so that what WOULD have been an 8 am sunrise becomes 7 am.

• But sunrise, and sunlight, continue moving forward. In fact, the day gets progressively later all the way to Dec 31, when it hits 7:53 am

• Sunrise sits at that point for another 8 days, until it starts rolling back (getting earlier) starting January 8.

But consider that without that shift in time, sunrise on November 6 would proceed forward – eventually stopping just shy of 9 am.

For the observant Jewish person, that means dawn comes at almost 7:30 am. The earliest time for tallit and tefillin would be 7:56 am. A typical morning service runs between 30-45 minutes, meaning that most folks won’t get out of services until 8:45 am.

For a person who has an early start to their day, or has to travel to the office; or get kids to school, this makes attending prayers almost impossible.

On the other hand, what happens if we don’t ever go back to daylight saving?

• On March 9 the clocks “spring forward” so that the 6:47 am sunrise becomes 7:45 am on March 10.

• But sunrise continues to get earlier, all the way until June 8, when it hits 5:52 am.

• And sunrise sits at that time for 12 days, all the way until it finally starts to move forward again on June 20.

But without the DST adjustment, sunrise would come at 4:52 am.

You might expect, at this point, that I’d do a big reveal and show that sunSET is impacted. That’s not the case.

Back in November, sunset goes from 6:18 pm on November 4 to 5:17 pm the following day. It keeps getting earlier until December 5 when it hits 4:56 pm.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I think sunset at 5 pm kind of sucks. But I’m willing to accept it far more than having to manage prayers at almost 9 am. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, the latest sunset hits on June 20, at 9:04 pm.

If you are completely turned around at that point, join the club. I had to do a few exports from timeanddate.com and some manual sorting to get it all straight:

If we never sprang forward into daylight saving time:

• The earliest sunrise would be 4:49 am (on Jun 13)
• The latest sunrise would be 7:51 am (Jan 9)
• The earliest sunset would be 4:56 pm (Dec 4)
• The latest sunset would be 8:04 pm (Jul 4)

Meanwhile, if we never fell back – meaning permanent daylight saving time:

• The earliest sunrise would be 5:49 am (Jun 13)
• The latest sunrise would be 8:51 am (Jan 9)
• The earliest sunset would be 5:56 pm (Dec 4)
• The latest sunset would be 9:04 pm (Jul 4)

It’s worth clarifying what DST is giving us now:

• The earliest sunrise is 5:49 am (Jun 13)
• The latest sunrise is 7:59 am (Nov 5)
• The earliest sunset is 4:56 pm (Dec 4)
• The latest sunset is 9:04 pm (Jul 4)

With all of that said, my opinion is that the DST system doesn’t offer very much benefit for the trouble. Moreover, as an orthodox Jew – for whom prayers (and therefore the cycles of sunrise and sunset) matter more than the time on a clock – remaining on standard (non-DST) time would be my choice.

On the one hand, I’m in luck. While, under Federal law, states can opt out of DST, they cannot choose to remain permanently on DST without approval.

On the other, it seems this is the less popular choice. In recent years, over 650 bills to make DST permanent have been considered in various states across the country. 19 states have passed those bills, which would immediately take effect the moment the federal government approves it.

But for the moment, things appear to be staying put. I guess I’ll try not to lose any sleep over it. Share this:

Also published here