Time to Fall Back!
On your mark, get set, change your clocks — unless you live in Arizona and Hawaii.
Daylight saving time is upon us once again, or in a nutshell, “longer days in the summer, shorter days in the winter.” For those in the Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific time zones, the time will change.
Daylight saving time in the fall means we “fall back” and — depending on your outlook — we lose an hour during the day or we gain an extra hour of sleep. For those states that observe Daylight saving time, it occurs the first Sunday in November. For 2021, the time change happens at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 7. Its counterpart in the spring is when we gain (or lose if you’re talking about sleep) an hour or “spring forward.” The states that recognize Daylight saving time will set the clock one hour ahead in March 2022.
If you live on the East Coast, you’re in the Eastern Time zone, and if it’s 6 p.m. in Florida, it’s 3 p.m. in California, which is in the Pacific Time zone. Subtracting three hours to get the time from Eastern to Pacific, or two hours from Eastern to Mountain and one hour from Eastern to Central, that’s what we call “time zone math.”
But what about the states that don’t observe Daylight saving time? What is the time zone math like for that? If it’s 6 p.m. in Florida, what time is it in Arizona or Hawaii, and how do you calculate the time? Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that don’t observe Daylight saving time.
