Tuesday, November 09, 2021

Daylight Saving Gripes


In the United States Daylight Saving ended last Sunday. Obviously you don't need a map to tell you that putting the clocks back by one hour every Fall is a despicable & sadistic form of torture. However if you want to really complain about the clock's changing you should refer to Andy Woodruff's Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool.

The actual number of hours of daylight remain the same with or without Daylight Saving. However the time you get up in the morning will affect how many hours of daylight you see. If you are an early riser then putting the clocks back in the Fall will probably result in you being awake for all the hours of sunlight. If you are a late riser then the clocks going back means that you are likely to miss an hour of daylight during the winter months.

The Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool is an interactive map which allows you to play around with a number of different settings to explore whether Daylight Saving suits your sleeping patterns. Using the map you can explore how the geography of sunrise and sunset is affected by Daylight Saving across the United States. If you enter the time that you would like sunrise or sunset to be then the map will show you where in the United States it is best to abolish or always keep Daylight Savings (and where it is best to keep the current system).

In the UK Daylight Saving time actually ended on the 31st October. If you live in Europe you can use Logan Williams' Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool, Europe Edition. Logan has tweaked Andy's original Observable notebook so that it works with a map of Europe. Again to use the tool you just need to enter your favorite time for sunrise or sunset and the map will then show you where in Europe it is best to abolish or always keep Daylight Savings (and where it is best to keep the current system).

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