Why you just lost an hour of sleep?

Some of you will complain about losing an hour of sleep, while others are excited about the extra hour of daylight in the afternoons. Bad for some great for others, the daylight saving time is here, again, starting March 12, 2017.

Daylight saving time in the United States is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour during the warmer part of the year, so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Most areas of the United States observe daylight saving time (DST), the exceptions being Arizona (except for the Navajo, who do observe daylight saving time on tribal lands), Hawaii, and the overseas territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. In general, daylight time is not observed in lower-latitude regions, as summer days are not much longer than winter ones as in higher latitudes, so the advantage of the change is smaller.

Daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, with the time changes taking place at 2:00 a.m. local time. With a mnemonic word play referring to seasons, clocks “spring forward and fall back” — that is, in springtime the clocks are moved forward from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and in fall they are moved back from 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. Daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks (238 days) every year, about 65% of the entire year (including leap years).

In 2017 the daylight saving time starts on March 12 and ends on November 5. In 2018 the daylight saving time will start on March 11 and it will end on November 4.

By the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time (DST) was extended in the United States beginning in 2007. As from that year, DST begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November. In years when April 1 falls on Monday through Wednesday, these changes result in a DST period that is five weeks longer; in all other years the DST period is instead four weeks longer.

Did you know that a study by Hardee’s fast-food chain estimated that extending DST would increase sales by $880 a week per store?