I used to be a big fan of Daylight Saving Time. I remember summer evenings, racing through supper just so I could get back outside with friends in the neighborhood. The curfew law in place by my Mother was "Be home when the street lights came on, and not a moment later!". I grew up in the Midwest where there was still a little bit of daylight as late as 9pm, so the street lights stayed off until 8:30. That was like midnight to a 10 year old!
Fast forward 30 years. I work on a morning show. I have a wife and four kids. It's already hard enough to get the proper amount of sleep every night, but it's especially tough when it's still daylight outside at bedtime! Naturally, living things go through the motions each day of waking up and falling asleep guided by the sun. But us humans want more. We want to use as many minutes of each day that we can. If we don't complete each of our tasks for the day, we figure out how to get more work done. Since we can't control the sun, we've decided to control the clock instead.
Now I know that most of the working world is 9-5! With kids and school, that means up at 6, kids on the bus at 7, head for work at 8, and if we're lucky, back home by 6pm. During the winter, that means getting up when it's still dark, and getting home as the sun sets. But with the warmer weather and longer days during the summer, we have extra time in the evenings for activities with the family, yard work, or whatever. And...we switch the clocks forward one hour, so we can keep the sun out even longer during the evening. We call it Daylight Saving Time. I propose (from a morning person's perspective) that we call it Daylight Stealing Time!
You see by switching the clocks, you're not saving anything. Even though the sunset Saturday was at 6:15 and sunset Sunday was 7:16, the day was only 1 minute longer. And this is because of the natural progression from Winter to Summer. The days get longer. So basically the other 59 minutes of daylight was stolen from the morning. Anyone have trouble getting a teenager out of bed for school Monday? Felt yourself yawning during the day this week? Still having trouble getting to bed at night? Experts say, just losing that one hour, takes a full week to adjust to. I go to bed later than most of my morning crew, but 11 o'clock Sunday night, and around 10 the last two nights is taking its toll on me. 3am is still 3am no matter if it's Daylight or Standard time. The weekend can't get here any sooner.
Those of us in the meteorology world work on two clocks. Local time and Universal time. The prime meridian is the imaginary line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres. It runs through Greenwich, England. You may have seen UTC, or GMT, or Z time. All of these are the same. The time in Greenwich is the official time of the planet. If you have a clock set to Universal Time in Louisiana, the the clock says the same thing in China, England, Australia, and Siberia. When weather balloons are released, they all go at approximately the same time...around the globe using Z time. That way we can get a measure of the atmosphere around the world, all at the same time. Unfortunately our local clock changes. Z time does not.
I always try to use the most up to date information to produce my weather forecast each day. You wouldn't want me to base my forecast on a computer model from yesterday right? Well, when daylight time kicks in, that's exactly what I have to do. Because of the time change, essentially I (and you) are doing everything one hour earlier. Well our computer models are running at the same time as always. Some models update more than others, but some of the most dependable models update every six hours at 0z, 6z, 12z, and 18z. Before daylight time the 06Z models would be ready for me to use for the morning show (usually ready by 4am). Now the 06z stuff doesn't come in until our show has started (after 5am). Therefore, the most recent model I can use is 0z. Subtract 5 hours from 0z and you get 7pm our time...yesterday.
With older data, my forecast is based on weather parameters that may have changed. With less accurate data, the forecast becomes less accurate too. Now the changes in the models usually aren't too dramatic. But when it comes to very specific forecasting, such as hurricane tracks, the paths from model run to model run can switch by hundreds of miles in a short term forecast, to thousands of miles by day 5. Making big changes during the show is a hard enough task in itself with Weather on the 3s. Some of the maps and the adjustments to the data can take up to an hour to produce. Have you ever seen a forecast saying the hurricane was going to Florida, and when you get to work everyone is talking about the hurricane coming here. Well the new model was used during the second hour of the show, you watched the first hour and missed it.
I suggest, instead of pushing the clocks forward one hour, let's roll it backwards by 23. You still get the daylight saving time effect in the evening, but instead of losing an hour of sleep, you gain a whole day to adjust! Everyone loves a three day weekend right? Then, when it's time to change the clocks back in the fall, you'll have to lose a day going forward 23 hours. I choose MONDAY. Skip the Monday, have the week begin on Tuesday making a four day week. Seems like a win/win scenario to me!

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