How a permanent change to daylight saving time would impact you

On Tuesday, the Sunshine Protection Act was passed by the House, sending the legislation to the Senate. This bill would make daylight saving time, the time we are currently in, permanent, meaning you would no longer need to "fall back" by setting your clocks back one hour during the fall season. Our clocks would stay in the same setting all year round.

A bill like this was already attempted once, but it did not last very long. In the 70s, President Nixon passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act into law, but it was quickly repealed. This was largely due to a high rate of unpopularity amongst citizens, as pitch-black winter morning commutes led to things like more accidents and hazards on the roads.

The biggest positive with this would be the later sunsets during the winter season. Our latest sunset would stay the same, setting around 8:40 PM during June and July. The difference is that instead of our earliest sunsets being around 4:40 PM during December and early January, they would be closer to 5:40-5:50 PM. This would provide an extra hour of sunshine for the commute home from work.

Here's the tradeoff that would cause an impact to many: the time at which the sun would rise during the winter would be much, much later. There would still be the very early sunrises at around 5:40-6:00 AM during the summer, but during the winter, our latest sunrise would be at almost 8:30 AM, well after most have headed off to work or school.

Not only would it simply be dark for the majority of commuters during the morning, but there could also be the potential for wintry impacts to linger longer into those hours.

Some of the most wintry impacts come from overnight "inversions", or temperatures that warm with height overnight. Cooler air, and most likely air that has a temperature below freezing, sinks to the surface, pushing all the warmer, and sometimes above freezing air into the upper levels of the atmosphere. These small temperature differences throughout the atmosphere can cause problematic precipitation, like freezing rain, and unfortunately, can not be overcome until sunshine is present to reheat the surface of the earth.

So, if, for example, there was an overnight into early morning event where freezing rain was an issue, it could not be properly melted until after the sun rose and heated the ground after 8:30 in the morning, well after the time when most would have headed to work or to school. This would pose a higher risk of accidents or hazards, as things like black ice, which comes with freezing rain, are nearly impossible to see in the dark. Combining this with a higher density of people on the road in the dark, the potential dangers could become much higher.

For now, it is just a "what-if", but depending on the popularity in the Senate, it could have a chance to become a reality across the nation.