Sunset won’t be until 5 p.m. today. Should WA finally get off time change roller coaster?
The darkness is fading. You can see it.
I noticed the difference this morning, shortly after 7 a.m., as I dropped my daughter off at high school. As we found our spot in the long line of idling cars waiting to unload salty teenagers, first light peaked over the cold horizon. The 14-year-old remarked on it first, offering a full sentence of words without prodding or eye rolls. That’s how I knew it was serious.
What we saw was no illusion. According to the official tracking of such things, sunrise today came at roughly 7:43 a.m., and sunset won’t come until a few ticks after 5 p.m. That will provide all of us with roughly 9 hours and 18 minutes of precious sunlight, the most we’ve seen this year. It’s a dance we know well: the daily addition and subtraction of light, depending on the time of year. But as accustomed as we might be, there’s no denying the psychological lift a few more minutes of sunlight provides. We’re butterflies crawling out of our seasonal chrysalises.
It’s also a reminder of one of the few virtues of the switch from daylight saving time to standard time that now occurs every November. Without it, that moment with my daughter wouldn’t have happened. Sunrise would have still been more than an hour away, talked about like a rumor by students making their way to class. On the other hand, sunset would also be an hour later, making dinners in the dark a thing of the past.
Pros and cons, as they say.
Is it time for Washington to finally get off the time change roller coaster? That seems to be the popular sentiment, and it’s hard to disagree with. There’s ample evidence suggesting that the twice-yearly shifts mess with our body clocks and our minds — not to mention our safety on the road — which is one of many reasons state lawmakers passed a bill in 2019 that sought to make daylight saving time permanent. There was just one catch: the need for Congressional approval or an OK from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Both have yet to come.
Tired of the waiting game, Yakima state Sen. Jim Honeyford introduced a bill this legislative session that would make standard time in Washington permanent, “until congress authorizes states to observe daylight saving time year-round.” Unlike a permanent switch to daylight saving time, there would be no need for groveling for federal permission. It’s a change the state could enact on its own.
Under Honeyford’s bill, our distribution of daylight in winter months would look as it does now, but those glorious late sunsets that make Washington summers so magical would recede, just a bit. We’d also welcome the sun even earlier each day.
Pros and cons, as they say.
Perhaps I’ve simply been living in the Evergreen State for too long, but I have trouble getting worked up about either scenario. Then again, maybe that’s just my natural temperament. My wife is the type of person who sees a problem and throws herself into fixing it. My natural inclination is to roll with the punches, and make the best of it.
In other words, I’m chalking that peek at the morning sun with my daughter this morning as a victory, and looking forward to that 5 p.m. sunset.
You take the wins where they come.
This story was originally published January 25, 2022 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Sunset won’t be until 5 p.m. today. Should WA finally get off time change roller coaster?."
