Want an Extra Hour of 2021? You Get One As Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday

SAN ANGELO – Talk around coffee shops and water coolers this last year sometimes has included a conversation about how great things will be when the pandemic is over and this year comes to a close.  And there are memes on social media lamenting the fact that we get an additional hour of 2021 when Daylight Saving Time comes to an end.  

Like it or not, Daylight Saving Time comes to an end early Sunday morning, Nov. 7.  so clocks 'fall back' from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. giving us all one additional hour of 2021.  

You're welcome.  

 While most cell phones will adjust the time automatically Sunday morning,  it’s time for that twice a year round of going throughout the house changing all the clocks one hour.  

Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday morning.  Daylight Saving Time (sometimes incorrectly called daylight savings time) is the concept of making better use of the day's light by moving an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.  

English architect William Willett first proposed the idea to change the clocks in 1907 when he published The Waste of Daylight.

It is believed that Willett's idea arose from an epiphany he had that "the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the workday is over."

He pitched the idea to Parliament in 1908, but it was ultimately disregarded.

Germany was the first country to implement daylight saving time in 1916 during World War I, believing it would save fuel while battling the Allied Powers.

Daylight Savings was so unpopular that Congress repealed the law over then-President Woodrow Wilson's override in 1919. That kept the decision of whether to move the clock in the hands of local officials until President Franklin Roosevelt brought it back nationwide during World War II. "War Time" - in which the U.S. stayed on Daylight Savings Time year-round lasted from Feb. 9, 1942- Sept. 30, 1945.

Control returned to states and cities until 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act. Under the federal law, Daylight Saving Time began on the last Sunday of April and concluded on the final Sunday of October.  The weekend to turn the clock ahead remained in place until 1986 when Congress changed it to the first weekend in April. Then in 2007, Daylight Saving was altered to its current form - it begins on the first weekend in March and lasts until the first weekend of November.

Regardless, remember to set your clocks back one hour before you go to bed Saturday night and check your phone Sunday morning just to be sure you're keeping up with the end of Daylight Saving Time.  

Who knows; maybe a year from now the pandemic will be a distant memory and Daylight Saving Time will be the issue of the day.