Scott Fillmer

It is that time of year again. The time when those of us who live on the far eastern edge of a time zone have to watch it get dark before dinner arrives. This is the time of year down in the south when you turn on the Cowboys, playing at AT&T Stadium, and see that massive blanket of sun flowing in those huge glass windows on the west side of the stadium. Then you look outside here in East Alabama and remember, oh right, it’s pitch black outside already.

Knowing Dallas and Auburn share the Central Time Zone, here in Alabama you feel still feel slightly envious of the folks in Arlington. They get to appreciate so much more daylight there than we do here because of their western proximity to Central Time, right.

Well, as you can see, technically of course Dallas is almost on an equal plane with Auburn geographically, perhaps even just slightly north of Auburn. So we each receive the same number of minutes of light every day. Now Fairbanks, AK! Those folks have it rough. I really have no idea how the fine folks in Alaska deal with so much darkness in the winter, but that’s a whole different level of darkness than we have here in the south.

What Happened to Staying on Daylight Savings Time?

I really thought we were done with coming off Daylight Savings Time at this point, but here we are tonight changing our clocks again.

We did have this bill here in Alabama where we overwhelmingly passed all this stuff to move to Daylight Savings Time (DST) year round. But then it had to pass in Washington since the feds have to allow the states to make this change.

And I thought it did. Until I looked a little deeper.

…the Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021-2022. The act would adopt DST year-round, technically moving forward by one hour what is currently considered standard time. The change would take place November 5th 2023 and would allow those states that had previously chosen to move to year-round DST to make the change.

The bill’s fate in the House is uncertain, however, with no movement on the measure.

Ok, so there it is. It would not take place until November 2023, and we are waiting on the House. Got it. Well, at least it will be light in the morning before 8am starting next week. Surprisingly, this information was not easy to find. Maybe politicians have better things to do right now than mess with the clocks, who really knows. November always seems to be a busy time for them.

In the mean time, if you live on the far eastern side of one of the time zones, welcome to 4pm darkness. I’m sure the House will get around to voting on it soon. 🙄