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Posted by Kelly Whitt Feb 11, 2007 |
Lately I've noticed that our 5:30 to 6:00 dinner time has been getting pushed back up to an hour later than usual. I thought that my being busy working had something to do with it, and it may take part of the blame. But tonight I realized there was something else involved. I had once again been busy working, plugging away on the computer, when the thought occurred to me that I would need to make dinner soon. But because my office has a west-facing window, I could see that it was still quite light out, so I figured that I had a half an hour or so to keep working. And then I looked at the clock. It was already 5:30. Somehow the days had been getting longer without my taking note of it. After months of darkness falling in the four o'clock hour, light was now lingering longer in the evening.
It's still cold outside, almost unbearably cold for some of us, but the promise of spring can be seen by watching the sunset. Not only will our days continue to get longer, with the sun rising one to two minutes earlier and setting one to two minutes later, but the sun will climb farther to the north and take a longer trek across the sky. As we get closer to the spring equinox, on March 20 at 7:07 p.m. EST, we will see the sun rapidly move toward the north at each successive sunset.
This year, 2007, the United States will see a change with how we observe Daylight Saving Time. Normally we set our clocks forward the first Sunday in April. This year we will be setting them forward much earlier, on the second Sunday in March (March 11). The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the dates for Daylight Saving Time, to begin the second Sunday in March and to end the first Sunday in November (instead of in October). Making a longer length for Daylight Saving Time was done to make an impact on needing less energy by having longer daylight hours in the evening, instead of in the morning. So while you will notice the sun setting much later at the end of March than you remember it from years past, you be can assured that your trees and flowering bulbs have not noticed any change. Any earlier flowering is not due to us fiddling with the clocks, although it is very likely due to us fiddling with the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.