TIME CHANGE: I Hate Having to Stay Up to 2 a.m. Just to Change the Clocks ... "Spring Forward, Fall Back," Daylight Savings Time Ends and Clocks Move Back An Hour

It's that time again, to change the clocks, under the rubric of "Spring Forward, Fall Back."

One website sure to get overloaded is Time.Gov, offering the official U.S. Time. It also reports on the innacuracy of your computer's clock.

As Saturday night, Nov. 6, 2021, merges into early Sunday morning, Nov. 7, the clocks move back from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. for most of the United States.

Daylight Savings Time comes to an end, and most of the country goes back to "Standard Time," such as switching back from Eastern Daylight Time to Eastern Standard Time.

While some dutiful persons might adjust their clocks at 2 a.m., most people do it before turning it.

To make things potentially more confusing, cellphones usually make the switch automatically, if tied in with the cellphone network.

Although beware of cellphones that are set to ignore the network for time settings, which need to be dealt with manually, unless their settings are switched back to take their time settings from the network again.

Computers also seem to deduce the need to change clocks, yet might ask for some reaffirmation.

Car clocks, stove clocks, wall clocks and the whole additional range of clocks, of course, need attention manually.

In recent years, one sometimes encounters individuals who get confused about the meaning of "Standard Time," apparently thinking that it is a generic term for whatever time is prevailing for a time zone. In reality, of course, for example, Eastern Standard Time stays the same all year, and Eastern Daylight Time is technically the same all year, an hour later than Eastern Standard Time. The time used in the Eastern Time Zone, perhaps referred to simply as "Eastern Time" actually switches back and forth between the two, now going into Eastern Standard Time (EST) before switching back to Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) in the spring.

In one interesting case, while much of Arizona does not change its clocks, staying on Mountain Standard Time all year, the Navajo Nation, itself larger than some states, does change clocks. The Navajo apparently are motivated to use Daylight Savings Time (DST) half the year because their territory extends into other states that also use DST half the year.

So for now at least, for the nomenclature-challenged who get confused and mistakenly think that Eastern Time and Eastern Standard Time are always the same thing, at least they will be correct for the next six months.

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Key Words: Time, Clocks, Daylight Savings Time

Clock file photo, adapted from image at nps.gov with photo credit to Daphne Yun