The first day of fall begins on Sunday morning, but there are still more than six weeks before Daylight Savings Time ends and the clocks go back an hour.

Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. Clocks will go back one hour, theoretically giving us an extra hour of sleep.

The amount of daylight has decreased slightly each day since the start of summer on June 20. The last sunset after 19:00 was on Tuesday. In late September, sunset will occur around 18:40.

Daylight hours will decrease each day until December 21, when the winter solstice occurs at 4:19 a.m. After that, the days will increase again until the summer solstice on June 20, 2025.

The downside is that the sun rises about an hour earlier each morning after we return to standard time in early November. On November 2, sunrise in New Jersey is about 7:29 a.m. and sunset is about 5:53 a.m. The next day, sunrise is at 6:30 a.m. but sunset is at 4:52 a.m.

While millions of people travel home from work largely or completely in the dark in November, it is actually lighter for longer in the morning during their commute.

The clocks officially go “back” from 2am on the first Sunday in November to 1am

Daylight saving time began on Sunday, March 10, 2024, and will end on Sunday, November 3, 2024 — a period of 238 days. Since 2007, Daylight Saving Time has lasted from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

We turn the clocks forward again on March 9, 2025 — 126 days after we turned them back. Daylight Saving Time in 2025 ends on November 2, 2025.

The concept dates back more than a century, when English architect William Willett proposed the idea of ​​changing the clock in 1907 in “The Waste of Daylight.” The idea of ​​using daylight more efficiently can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin.

During a visit to Paris in 1784, he wrote a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris calling for a tax on every Parisian whose windows were closed after sunrise to “encourage the economy of using sunlight instead of candles,” according to Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight saving time became widespread in the United States when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was passed. At the time, daylight saving time ran from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, and states were allowed to choose not to use it.

In 1986, Daylight Saving Time was changed from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. The most recent revision was in 2006, when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed Daylight Saving Time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe Daylight Savings Time. The time change is also not observed in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. All of Indiana did not begin observing Daylight Savings Time until 2006.

Eighteen states have passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent. California voters voted to make daylight saving time year-round. Those changes, however, require federal approval.

In March 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the biannual clock change. However, the U.S. House of Representatives has not voted on it.

A handful of provinces in Canada (most of Saskatchewan and Yukon) have adopted permanent daylight saving time, as have parts of British Columbia and two communities in northwestern Ontario.

About 70 countries observe Daylight Saving Time. Most of North America, Europe, and parts of South America and New Zealand observe it, while China, Japan, India and most other countries do not.

It starts on different dates elsewhere. In Europe, for example, Daylight Saving Time starts on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October.