We’re well into the second half of 2024, and although there’s plenty of summer left, those early sunsets are looming ever closer. Now that the summer solstice is in the rearview mirror, it’s not unreasonable to start thinking about some quintessential fall activities… we’re thinking apple picking, pumpkin patches… oh, and turning the clocks back for daylight saving time.
Since 2007, daylight saving time has begun on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November. But with the introduction of the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022, the Senate began grappling with whether to do away with the biannual clock change. By making daylight saving time permanent, we would have more sunlight in the evenings and less in the mornings.
In 2023, the Senate unanimously approved a bill to do just that, but the proposal ran out of time for approval in the House.
As long as the bill is at a standstill, we’ll continue changing our clocks twice a year. This year, we set our clocks forward at 2 AM on March 10, 2024, and we’ll once again set them back at 2 AM on November 3, 2024.
Where did daylight saving time come from?
Several places around the world are rumored to have created the very first iteration of daylight saving time, but Germany and Austria were the first to officially implement the practice in 1916 in order to conserve energy.
Here in the U.S., daylight saving time was established through the Standard Time Act of 1918. The practice was repealed, re-established, and revised numerous times throughout the decades. It wasn’t until 2007 that we began living by the March-to-November dates.
Most of the U.S. follows DST, but there is a handful of locations that do not observe it: they are Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and most of Arizona (excluding the Navajo Nation).
When are Los Angeles’ earliest sunsets of 2024?
Here in L.A., we’ll enjoy post-7:30pm sunsets for about 3 more weeks. The sun will begin setting before 7pm on September 15th.
Pre-5pm sunsets will last from November 3rd, when we set our clocks back, all the way through until January 7th, 2025.