It’s Back – Mountain Daylight Time This Weekend

A theft is planned this weekend - and it's legal! The "powers that be" will steal an hour from us as Daylight Saving Time arrives at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, March 8. The easiest way to observe the change is to set your clocks AHEAD ONE HOUR as you go to bed Saturday night, March 7, and you'll be on time Sunday morning. That hour will be held hostage until November 1st, 2020, when you'll set your clock BACK one hour. "Spring Forward, Fall Back." Currently, there is a health argument against DST - including a Swiss study - that says the short-term and long-term effects of taking an hour out and later restoring it causes less sleep and generally stresses the heart and other parts of the human body. However, if we were to eliminate the practice due to health reasons, which way should we go? Some say we should have DST hours all year, others say "just get rid of it."

Around the world, countries have different DST periods. Many start DST on March 29th. The end dates are different, too. This year, the USA stops it November 1. Other countries end it on October 25. And yet others don't have DST at all, (like our states of Hawaii and Arizona). The U.S. federal DST law was established during World War I and again in World War II, called "War Time." That was repealed in 1945. In 1966, it came back with the Uniform Time Act, with the start on the last Sunday in April. But that wasn't good enough. In 1986, DST was lengthened to the First Sunday in April. But even that wasn't good enough. Congress lengthened DST again in 2007 to the current period - Second Sunday in March to the First Sunday in November.

How did all this start? Historians tell us that the folks in Thunder Bay, Canada, established a daylight saving time in 1908. Germany and Austria were the first countries to do it in 1916. Other countries followed suit. But you know, it could've been worse - a proposal in New Zealand in 1895 suggested a TWO HOUR time shift. Of course, it never happened. Whew! All this time talk has made me tired. Sleep well - if you can!