Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday: What NYC Needs To Know

NEW YORK CITY — The City That Never Sleeps is about to get darker much earlier.

Daylight saving time ends Sunday, meaning clocks in New York City will "fall back" one hour.

While it means an extra hour of sleep for New Yorkers, it also comes at a cost: much earlier sunsets.

How early? On Sunday, the sun will set at 4:45 p.m.

For New Yorkers tired of the annual ritual of resetting their microwave's clock, there's some hope — this could be the last time clocks fall back, assuming a much-ballyhooed bill passes Congress.

Patch readers may recall the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act earlier this year, delighting a majority of Americans annoyed by the ritual of springing forward and falling back.

As the proposed legislation stands now, year-round daylight saving time would take effect in November 2023, assuming it passes the House and President Joe Biden signs it. Hawaii and, for the most part, Arizona are exempted from the current law on daylight saving time and would be in the proposed legislation as well.

No action has been taken on the House version of the legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, and it’s unlikely to until lawmakers can come to agreement on a fundamental question: Which should it be, year-round daylight saving time, as the Senate version stipulates, or year-round standard time, which some lawmakers in rural states prefer?

“I can’t say it’s a priority,” U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., the New Jersey Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Hill earlier this year.

Those priorities include dealing with inflation, which hasn’t been this high since 1981; securing enough votes in the House to pass a federal assault weapons ban and other issues related to gun violence in America; and codifying rights, such as same-sex marriage and abortion when a mother’s life is threatened, put in jeopardy when the conservative U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“We continue to try to come up with a consensus but so far, it’s eluded us,” Pallone told The Hill. “The problem is that a lot of people say to me, ‘Oh, we should just have, you know, we shouldn’t switch back and forth, we should just have standard or daylight saving,’ but then they disagree over which one to enact. And so that’s the problem. We need a consensus that if we’re gonna have one time, what is it? And I haven’t been able to get a consensus on that.”

Pallone’s remarks aren’t surprising.

After the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine asked the House panel to take a step back and take a thoughtful look at the pros and cons of both options, saying the group didn’t get a chance to debate the merits of the proposal before it was rushed through the Senate late last winter.

“If we can get this passed, we don’t have to do this stupidity anymore,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who sponsored the legislation, said at the time. “Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come.”

The sleep medicine group pointed to research showing the sudden switch from standard to daylight saving time on the second Sunday in March is associated with significant public health and safety risks. Among them: An increase in heart attacks, mood disorders and motor vehicle crashes.

“Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety,” the group said, adding its statement had been endorsed by more than 20 medical, scientific and civic organizations.

Although year-round daylight saving time would mean an extra hour of daylight in the late afternoon and early evening during the fall and winter months, it would mean many of America’s children would be getting to school in the dark.

Consider the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. On Dec. 21, 2023, sunrise in New York City is 7:17 a.m. and sunset is 4:30 p.m. With the proposed law in effect, sunrise wouldn’t be until 8:17 a.m. and sunset would be pushed to 5:30 p.m.

A CBS News/YouGov poll in April found that 46 percent of Americans want year-round daylight saving time, 33 percent favor year-round standard time and 21 percent want to leave things as they are. That poll found older Americans were slightly more inclined than younger people to prefer year-round daylight saving time. Support for year-round daylight time was highest in the Northeast, Midwest and South.

A Monmouth University Poll a month earlier found two-thirds of Americans want to do away with the clock re-setting practice. About 44 percent prefer making daylight saving time permanent, while 13 percent favor year-round standard time.