The end of daylight saving time in 2024 is finally here. This weekend the clocks go back an hour and a longer day begins with darkness falling at 5 p.m.

Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 3, 2024, when the clocks will “set back” an hour, theoretically giving us an extra hour of sleep.

Since the start of summer on June 20, the amount of daylight has decreased slightly each day. The last sunset after 6 p.m. in New Jersey through March occurred last week. After the clocks go back, the next sunset after 5 p.m. in New Jersey won't occur until mid-January.

The amount of daylight decreases day by day until the winter solstice arrives at 4:19 a.m. on December 21, marking the official start of winter. Then the length of days begins to increase until the summer solstice on June 20, 2025.

The downside is that the sun will rise about an hour earlier each morning when we return to standard time this weekend.

On Saturday, sunrise in New Jersey will be around 7:29 a.m. and sunset will be around 5:53 p.m. The next day the sun rises at 6:30 a.m. but sets at 4:52 p.m

Officially, the clocks go back to 1 a.m. at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November

Daylight saving time began on Sunday, March 10, 2024 and ends on Sunday – a period of 238 days. Since 2007 it has lasted from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

We will next move the clocks forward on March 9, 2025 – 126 days after we turned them back. Daylight saving time in 2025 ends on November 2, 2025.

The concept dates back more than a century when English architect William Willett proposed the idea of ​​changing the clocks in 1907 in “The Waste of Daylight.” The suggestion to use daylight more efficiently goes back to Benjamin Franklin.

During a visit to Paris in 1784, he wrote a letter to the editors of the “Journal of Paris” in which he called for a tax on every Parisian whose windows were closed after sunrise in order to “the economics of using sunshine instead of candles “To promote it,” said Michael Downing, author of “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.”

With the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, daylight saving time became widespread in the United States. Back then, daylight saving time applied from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October and states could opt out.

In 1986, daylight saving time changed to the time from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. The most recent revision took effect in 2006, when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 revised daylight saving time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe Daylight Saving Time. The time change will also not be observed in the US territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands. Daylight saving time was not implemented across Indiana until 2006.

Eighteen states have passed laws to make daylight saving time permanent. California voters have voted to allow year-round daylight saving time. However, these changes require federal approval.

In March 2022, the US Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would eliminate changing clocks twice a year. However, the US House of Representatives did not vote on it.

A handful of provinces in Canada – most of Saskatchewan and Yukon – have adopted permanent daylight saving time, as have parts of British Columbia and two communities in northwestern Ontario.

About 70 countries observe daylight saving time. Most of North America, Europe and parts of South America and New Zealand comply, while China, Japan, India and most other countries do not.

Elsewhere it starts on different dates. For example, in Europe, daylight saving time begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October.