Daylight Savings Time

One hour sleep lost

This Sunday people in most states will switch ahead their clocks and lose an hour as daylight saving time begins in the US.
If this season’s “spring forward” seems a bit earlier than usual, that’s because it is – but only by a few days, at least compared with recent years. (Last year, we switched our clocks ahead on March 13, and in 2010 it was March 14, for instance.) It was in 2007, however, when the beginning of daylight saving time jumped ahead by two full weeks.
That was due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended the entire period of daylight saving time by four weeks from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. Before 2007, daylight saving time began at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April and ended at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday the following October.
Are you an owl or a lark? Take our chronotype quiz.
So why did the US government see fit to force us from our beds in ever-greater darkness, well before the first day of spring?