(The following appeared on the Chicago Sun-Times website on March 12, 2010.)
CHICAGO — It’s coming a few days later than in the last few years, but this weekend it’s time to “spring forward” again for daylight-saving time.
Last year, it began March 8; the year before, March 9.
A few facts about the time change, which is meant to help save energy by giving us more sunlit hours in the evening:
• We do it each year at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March, then “fall back” to standard time at 2 a.m. the first Sunday in November — this year, that’ll be Nov. 7. That makes for 238 days a year of daylight-saving time.
• Only one country observes daylight-saving time year-round — Kyrgyzstan.
• In the Southern Hemisphere, where our winter is their summer and vice-versa, they observe daylight-saving time from October to March.
• Most equatorial countries don’t observe daylight-saving time because daylight hours are basically the same there whether it’s summer or winter. In the United States, Hawaii, Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo reservation), Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands don’t observe it.
• In the United States, where it was first instituted during World War I, an extra four weeks was added to daylight-saving time in 2007.