On Sunday March 13, at 2:00 a.m., Daylight Saving Time begins. Clocks will be set forward one hour, with the change pushing sunsets later into the evening and sunrises later into the morning hours.
When clocks leap forward in the spring, researchers have found a slight increase in rates of heart attacks, traffic accidents, and workplace injuries — likely the effect of millions of people’s bodies being forced to adjust to the missing hour of sleep. Workplace productivity, meanwhile, tends to decrease. It’s not all negative, though: daylight saving adjustments have been adopted as checkpoints to remind families to address their home fire safety plans.
Kenai Fire Chief Tony Prior spoke to KSRM:
“Yeah, as always, we’d like to try to get that PSA out there that anytime we do the Daylight Saving Time is a perfect time for you to check the batteries and replace them in your smoke detectors. But also, when you’re looking at those to replace them, make sure that the detectors are no more than 10 years old. We recommend that you replace them after 10 years of service anyways. It’s a great time when you’re replacing those batteries to also take a look at the manufacture date of the detectors and determine if it’s time to actually replace them or not.”
Cleveland Clinic sleep specialist Dr. Nancy Foldvary says springing forward affects our circadian rhythm:
“The inside clock, the clock inside our brain that regulates sleep and awakefulness is typically a very reliable periodic process and having just one hour shift can actually affect us pretty significantly.”
Daylight saving time was first formally proposed in 1895 by a New Zealand entomologist named George Vernon Hudson, who realized that shifting clocks forward an hour would give him more time to collect insects in the evenings.
In the United States, the idea was formally adopted during World War I as part of an effort to save fuel, which was especially scarce. It was only done during the summer. After the war, DST was abandoned, adopted again during World War II, then abandoned again by some states but kept by others, beginning, and ending on irregular dates.
Finally, in 1966, the federal government mandated that all states had to do summer daylight saving time — unless the whole state opted out — and specified the start and end dates. Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, The Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are the only states and territories not observing Daylight Saving Time.
