The first daylight savings of this year, known as “spring forward,” is slated for this weekend.
People should turn their clocks forward an hour on Sunday at 2 a.m. EST (1 a.m. CST | 11 p.m. PST).
This causes evenings to have more daylight while mornings have less.
The United States has spring forward set for the second Sunday in March every year.
Other countries that have this include Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, Mexico, and Canada.
Some other countries have a range of daylight savings traditions, or none at all. Australia, for example, has its spring forward on the first Sunday of October, while the United Kingdom has its on the last Sunday in March.
In the United States, the clocks will be turned back again on November 2. However, some states decline to do so, including Arizona and Hawaii.
The practice of daylight savings is especially controversial in some countries--including the United States--and could dramatically shift soon to a different practice.
Tufts University professor Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, told National Geographic that each year at least 10 and often as many as 30 new bills appear in various state legislatures to advocate either permanently stopping daylight saving or going on daylight saving time all year long.
“It’s an annual treat,” he said, noting that the bills vary widely.
“This year I think the Kentucky/Tennessee situation is particularly interesting. Each state has two time zones, which adds to the complications, but if their two proposals went through their independent legislatures, Tennessee would be on permanent DST while Kentucky would be on permanent standard time.
“That would mean—and this is ridiculous but true—cities in Tennessee’s eastern time zone and Kentucky’s central time zone that are only 5 or 10 miles [8 to 16 kilometers] apart would have two-hour time differences.”
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