It’s still a few months before you have to worry about changing the clocks when daylight saving time ends, but if you want to plan ahead, here’s everything you need to know about the end of daylight saving time in 2024.
Daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 3rd.
On November 3rd, the clocks go back at 2am and many people will (hopefully) sleep an extra hour this weekend. It will also be lighter in the mornings.
- Read more: What impact would permanent daylight saving time have on Massachusetts if it were introduced?
There is a saying that helps people remember which direction the clocks are going.
“To remember how to set their clocks, people often use the expression ‘set the clock forward, set the clock back,’” says the Farmer’s Almanac.
In spring the clocks go forward and we lose an hour. In autumn, however, the clocks go back and we gain an hour.
The Farmer’s Almanac also recommends changing your clocks on Saturday before you go to bed so they’re set correctly when you wake up. However, many clocks, including phones and laptops, change automatically.
In 2025, daylight saving time begins on Sunday, March 9 at 2:00 a.m. and ends on Sunday, November 2 at 2:00 a.m.
- Read more: Daylight saving time ends on Sunday. This researcher hopes it ends forever
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, it all began with Benjamin Franklin’s book “An Economical Project”, which he wrote in 1784.
“The tone was bizarre, advocating for laws that would force citizens to rise at dawn to save the cost of candlelight,” the website said.
Some had hoped to abolish the twice-yearly time change.
Lawmakers argued that at the end of the day, having more light would be good for many Americans.
“Pretty much everyone in Rhode Island experiences the same thing on that unfortunate day in early November … when suddenly an hour of your day, an hour of your daylight, disappears and twilight sets in an hour earlier,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the co-sponsors of the Sunshine Protection Act, in a speech on the Senate floor.
- Read more: Why we still change the clocks to daylight saving time after a law was passed
He argued that the time change “literally darkens our lives”.
“No more time changes, more hours of daylight to spend outside after school and work, and more smiles – that’s what we get with permanent daylight saving time,” Senator Ed Markey said in a statement.
