Daylight Saving Time is coming up for sleepy, enchanting Kane County, IL.

“Sleepy” might be the operative word in that sentence because we lose an hour of slumber as we transition from Saturday, March 7, to Sunday, March 8.

Officially and precisely, you’re supposed to move your clocks forward one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 8. Sunrise and sunset will be about 1 hour later on March 8, 2015 than the day before. There will be more light in the evening, according to the summary on timeanddate.com.

According to sunrisesunset.com (there is a real website by that name; we are not making this up), sunrise in our neck of the woods will be at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday and at 7:18 a.m. Sunday. Sunset will be at 5:49 p.m. Saturday and 6:50 p.m. Sunday.

Just as a little background, you can blame Ben Franklin for coming up with the Daylight Saving Time idea — and a London builder named William Willett for taking the idea seriously and pushing for it in a pamphlet titled, “Waste of Daylight.”

“Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used,” he wrote, according to Accurite.com.

I know I appreciate the “long, light evenings,” so I don’t lament the sleep deprivation as much as I might otherwise. It’s kind of a harbinger of spring, and after tying the record for the coldest February in Kane County history, as far as I’m concerned, we can’t get there soon enough.

FUN FACTS

For more, visit acurite.com.

It’s Daylight Saving Time

Not Daylight Savings Time. No “s.”

Violent Crime

A study by the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration found that crime was consistently less during periods of Daylight Saving Time than during comparable standard time periods. Data showed violent crime down 10 to 13 percent.

Chaos of Non-Uniform DST

Widespread confusion was created during the 1950s and 1960s when each U.S. locality could start and end Daylight Saving Time as it desired. One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. For exactly five weeks each year, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were not on the same time as Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Baltimore — but Chicago was. And, on one Ohio to West Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles! The situation led to millions of dollars in costs to several industries, especially those involving transportation and communications. Extra railroad timetables alone cost the today’s equivalent of more than $12 million per year.

Radio Stations

AM radio signals propagate much further at night than during the day. During daytime, more stations in neighboring areas can broadcast on the same frequency without interfering with each other. Because of this situation, there are hundreds of stations licensed to operate only in the daytime. Daylight Saving Time can affect the bottom line of these daytime-only radio stations: during parts of the year it can cause the stations to lose their most profitable time of day–the morning drive time. The gain of an hour of daylight — and thus broadcast time — in the evening does not fully compensate for the morning loss.

Voter Turnout in Elections

Through 2006, the Daylight Saving Time period has closed on the last Sunday in October, about a week before Election Day, which is held the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The extension of Daylight Saving Time into November has been proposed as a way to encourage greater voter participation, the theory being that more people would go to the polls if it was still light when they returned home from work. The U.S. law taking effect in 2007 pushes the end of Daylight Saving Time to the first Sunday in November. In some years (2010, 2021, 2027, and 2032), this will fall after Election Day, giving researchers the opportunity to gauge its effect on voter turnout.