Daylight saving time returns to Philly on Sunday, and the clock-change debate never goes away

Meteorologically, it’s over. Astronomically, the end is near. But almost nothing speaks more eloquently to the sunset of winter than the sun’s waiting until after 7 p.m. to call it a day, as it will on Sunday.

And almost nothing speaks more eloquently to the fact that clocks are on the move again than a fresh wave of conjecture about whether time is about to run out on the twice-a-year time-change ritual. It is a certainty that the ritual will be repeated at 1:59:59 a.m. on Sunday, when the time will magically spring forward to 3 a.m. as daylight saving time begins anew and continues until Nov. 2.

But President Donald Trump is on record as saying that he is in sync with 70% of the U.S. population in calling for an end to the time switch. Then again, he appears to have lost interest. (See below.) In response to an X poll question posed by Elon Musk, 58% appeared to favor year-round daylight saving time.

Could this really be the year it all ends? Stranger things have happened.

But not too many.

It would take more than a simple executive order, says Jim Reed, an official with the National Conference of Legislatures. It would require action by Congress, which appears to have some other fish to fry, and the White House has been mum.

In the meantime, for the millions who would gladly endure waking up in the dark for the privilege of getting home from work while it’s still light, Sunday is your day to celebrate. The sun will be setting at 7:02 p.m. and won’t set before 7 until Sept. 22. To mark the occasion, here are a few observations as time marches on.

Siding with legions of golfers, restaurants with outdoor dining, and youth-sports leagues on March 11, 2019, Trump posted on Twitter: “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!”

Siding with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and several other health organizations, on Dec. 11, 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

On Thursday, he appeared to shrug his shoulders and suggested he planned to take no action. Making no mention of ending the clock-change ritual, he said the nation appeared to be about “50-50″ divided between standard and daylight time and thus, “it’s hard to get excited about it. I assumed people would like to have more light later. But some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark.”

In an unscientific poll on X, Elon Musk, posed the question this way: “If daylight savings time change is canceled, do you prefer. ...” (The respondents presumably interpreted the question to mean, what would they prefer if the nation ended the clock-switch system.) The results were not quite in the 50-50 range.

Yes. The nation didn’t adopt the clock change until 1918. Daylight saving time went into effect on March 31 that year, which happened to be Easter Sunday. Some religious leaders were unhappy at the effects on sunrise services. Congress ended it after World War I, and it became a local option.

Yes. During World War II, the nation moved up the clocks year-round from 1942 to 1945, in what officially was designated “War Time.” The hour switch then became a local option again until 1966, when the Uniform Time Act divided the clock year into standard and daylight saving time. During the energy crisis of the 1970s, the United States went to year-round daylight saving time, but the experiment was wildly unpopular and abandoned after 10 months.

The Philly region is experiencing some of the year’s most rapid solar-radiation and day-length gains. The sunrise-to-sunset time jumps an hour and 20 minutes during March, better than 2½ minutes a day. On Sunday, Philly gets 11 hours, 43 minutes, and 18 seconds of daylight, up from 11 hours, 40 minutes, and 41 seconds on Saturday.

On Sunday, the sun will rise at 7:19 a.m. in Philadelphia. It will rise at 8:19 a.m. in Ontonagon, Mich., which is at the westernmost edge of the Eastern time zone. At the summer solstice, the sun won’t set until close to 10 p.m. out that way. Sleep experts say late sunsets are disruptive to sleep and body clocks and potentially dangerous. But look at the doughnut, not the hole, say the people at 100.5, a western Michigan radio station. Being at the west end has an advantage: The region “does not suffer from extremely early sunsets in the winter.”