PHOENIX (AP) - Daylight saving time 2021 starts at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 14.
Most everyone else in the United States loses an hour when they move their clocks ahead. In Arizona, we don’t engage in such silliness because we don’t participate in daylight saving time.
It’s one of the few times we get to feel smug about how reasonable and rational we are compared to most of the country, the Arizona Republic reports.
Feeling superior to most of the country is pretty much our favorite pastime from November through March because of the weather, but this daylight saving thing is something we can actually take credit for not having to deal with.
For Arizona it started in 1967, shortly after the U.S. adopted the Uniform Time Act, which set the guidelines for daylight saving time. Some wise Arizonans figured out there was no good reason to adjust our clocks to make sunset occur an hour later during the hottest months of the year.
When you live in the desert, daylight is way overrated. In summer, anyway. Summer brings the kind of daylight surplus that results in plummeting demand. So no, we don’t want to save it. If we could, we’d ship it to the Southern Hemisphere. We’d trade it straight up for one 70-degree day in August. Just one.
If we moved to DST, summer sunsets would occur an hour later, prolonging our heat-based agony. If only someone would introduce the Daylight Spending Act, allowing us to move the clocks back an hour in May.
A part of Arizona does go with the time flow. The Navajo Nation makes the changes each year, ensuring that residents of the reservation (which spans three states) stay on the same schedule.
• With daylight saving time, Arizona is three hours behind New York, two hours behind Chicago, one hour behind Denver and even with Los Angeles.
• Sporting events outside Arizona will start an hour earlier. That means you’ll be popping a beer at 10 a.m. MST when an NFL game starts.
• Shows will start earlier on some cable TV networks. That’s assuming you still watch at the scheduled time rather than via DVR or streaming.
FACTS ON DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME
• Daylight saving time was ostensibly started to save energy, but it turned out people enjoyed having an extra hour of daylight after work. Except in Arizona.
• The Navajo Reservation observes daylight saving time; the Hopi Reservation does not.
• In 1991 and again in 2014, a few lawmakers floated the idea of having Arizona join the daylight saving parade. Republicans and Democrats were united in their rejection of such a proposal, offering brief and shining moments of true bipartisanship.
• It is daylight saving time, not daylight savings time.
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