“Hooray! It’s Daylight Savings Time!” says almost no one on the Monday morning after the switch. Last year, when we hit daylight savings time again, I wrote this little piece on why we have daylight savings time and how the golf and BBQ industries have benefited from its earlier and earlier start in the U.S. This year, when the shock of losing an hour hits us all on Monday morning, we’re all going to be wondering if daylight savings is such a good idea again. So here to help you with that are a few interactive graphics that look at daylight savings from the perspective of hours of daylight.
Click on over to the one below, fill in the time you wake up and go to bed, and you’ll get a look at how many extra hours of daylight you get thanks to daylight savings. If you’re not so early to rise, like me getting up at 7:00 a.m., you’ll get 240 more hours of daylight. If you’re an early riser, up to milk the cows at 4:30, you’re actually getting all 4,568 hours of daylight available with or without daylight savings. The bad news? You wake up before 5:30 every morning!
Of course, where you’re located in your time zone will have an impact on what kind of sunrise and sunset times you have. So here’s another interactive map that lets you see the United States by Time Zone. Want to know how many times the sun comes up before 6:00 a.m under the status quo vs if daylight savings was abolished? Just click on the map to head over to the website. Scroll down to the bottom map, pick sunrise before 6:00 a.m, then hover your mouse over your home and you’ll get the number.
Now, these maps may not change your mind about daylight savings. But it gave you something to do while you’re still groggy from having leaped forward one hour. And maybe, just maybe, knowing how many extra hours of daylight you’re getting will make your lack of sleep seem a little more worth it. (It might also tell you where to move to get the most bang for your daylight buck!)
Cheers!
