Daylight Saving Time In CA: When To Turn Back The Clocks In 2024

CALIFORNIA — Sunday Nov. 3 at 2 a.m. is when daylight saving time officially ends, and the days will continue to get shorter as winter knocks at the door.

Once we return to standard time, sunrises and sunsets will be an hour earlier.

SEE ALSO: As DST Ends, Is It Time To Ditch Twice-A-Year Clock Changes? [Survey]

We’ll set clocks back an hour with the end of DST on Nov. 3, returning to a time in California when the sun sets around 5:08 in San Francisco and 4:57 in Los Angeles. By the time the winter solstice rolls around on Dec. 21, we’ll only have 9 hours and 53 minutes of daylight.

The original idea behind daylight saving time was first implemented more than a century ago with the Standard Time Act of 1918, was to conserve energy by adding more daylight hours to work shifts.

How effective daylight saving time is as an energy conservation measure is debatable. A 2008 Energy Department study found DST saved the country nearly 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, but a 2018 meta analysis of 44 studies found only a meager 0.34 percent decrease in energy consumption. A 2011 study based in Indiana, which has a complicated and messy history with DST, found slightly more energy usage during daylight saving time.

Daylight saving time is also complicated in Arizona, which stopped observing it in 1968 based on the energy needs of a hot, desert climate. Shifting an hour of daylight from the morning to the end of the day, when temperatures are typically the hottest, translated to more air conditioning use, not less.

However, the Navajo Nation, in the northeastern part of the state, observes DST. The Hopi Nation, which surrounds it, doesn’t.

The only other state that doesn’t observe DST is Hawaii, where it’s a moot point. The length of days and temperatures in Hawaii remain fairly consistent during the year due to the tropical state’s proximity to the equator.

Legislation passed in the Senate two years ago to adopt year-round daylight saving time briefly buoyed the hopes of some Americans who want to dispense with the twice-a-year ritual of changing their clocks, but didn’t make it out of committee in the House, where some lawmakers favored year-round standard time.

A YouGov poll last year showed Americans are hopelessly divided on whether to keep DST year-round or chuck it in favor of what’s colloquially called “God’s time” or continue to spring forward and fall back.

The public opinion poll conducted in early March after DST began found 62 percent of people want to dispense with the ritual. Of those, 50 percent wanted to adopt permanent daylight saving time, and 31 percent preferred permanent standard time.