NOTE: This Supplement is represents a modification of the entry that appeared in last Friday's Daily Summary.
On this Sunday morning most of the nation reverted back to Standard time after roughly 7 months of observing Daylight Saving Time. Since Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the eastern time zone sections of Indiana do not observe Daylight Saving Time, no time change will be needed in those parts of the country. Time changes have been mandated by the U.S. Congress. Following the old adage of "spring ahead, fall behind", you will need to have turned your clocks back by one hour to conform with the local time observance. An informative web site http://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/web.pages/holidays/DST.html explains the history involved with the institution of Daylight Saving Time not only in the United States but in other countries. This site has the potential for use in the classroom since it also has links to other items of interest, including the history of calendars and time.
What does this time change mean to you (other than earlier sunsets)? A change from Daylight Saving to Standard Time does not deduct an extra hour of daylight from the day nor does it affect weather patterns. While the weather will not change because of the time change, the times when you will be able to obtain weather charts will now be one hour earlier. The reason for this earlier time is that the National Weather Service always operates on "Z time" (variously called Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Coordinated Time) which does not observe Daylight Saving Time. Thus, the charts are still produced and transmitted at the same Z time.
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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2001, The American Meteorological Society.