I live in Arizona. It’s a decent state, known for many things, like the Grand Canyon, John McCain, Barry Goldwater, and 122 degree weather during the summer (to be fair, this has only happened once here in Phoenix).
What’s less well-known about Arizona is that we don’t “do” daylight savings time here. No, we’re a state of mavericks, apparently, and we decided some time back that daylight savings time was something happened to other people.
What does this mean for us as a state? Well, when the rest of you are on DST, we aren’t. We’re normally in the Mountain Time Zone, but during DST we shift over to the Pacific Time Zone. This means that for most of the year, we have the same time as states like California and Washington. The rest of the year we’ve the same time as places like Utah and Colorado.
It has its good points, I suppose. We don’t have to reset our clocks, which is nice (though my alarm clock auto-reset a couple weeks ago. Not only does it set for DST, but it does it on the old schedule, and I can’t disable it!). On the other hand, I have to reprogram lots of things on my DVR. The Daily Show, for example, is on here at 11pm during DST, but since we don’t shift time and the cable stations do, it’s now on at midnight, so I have to reset lots of my recording times.
I think daylight savings time is nonsense to begin with. At this point we should just, as a nation, spring ahead and stay there. There’s no point in falling back every year. It was one thing before electric lighting and such was readily available, but now we have light whenever we need it, so we don’t need DST. I know the farmers might like it, but most of us don’t live on farms, so suck it up and deal, guys.
I don’t expect we’re going to do this anytime soon, but hopefully we will eventually. It’s a minor thing, but it would be nice.
November 3, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Actually the farmers DON’T like it. There are chores on a farm that need to be done at sunrise. An abrupt one hour shift for the sunrise during the school year is disruptive in farming communities. At any rate over the years they’ve mostly gotten over it. The main reason Arizona doesn’t do it is due to the intense summer heat here. Our latest sunset here in Phoenix is around 7:45 pm in the summer so it doesn’t get dark until after 8:00 pm. By the standards of most urban areas in this country yes that is early. It is so hot here though we really don’t want it light out until 9:00 pm. It might be a little silly that we don’t do it but it works for us. Our state border areas are thinly populated enough it does not cause a major disruption. There are two areas that get a little interesting though. Bullhead City Arizona/Laughlin Nevada is one. Mostly because the tourists are in Nevada and for the ones that fly in the airport is in Arizona. The Navajo reservation is another. Officially the reservation is on daylight time because it sprawls over 3 states. I drive through the reservation when I go to Colorado. Gray Mountain, Cameron and Tuba City are definately not on daylight time. The schools are though to conform to tribal law. When I lived in Flagstaff they called this “Tuba Time”. Business are on one time (MST), schools are on another (MDT). At any rate I wish the whole country would just set it and forget it one spring. The main reason we don’t is because parents are worried about their kids waiting for a school bus in the dark. When I was growing up in Kansas City we went on daylight time early in 1974 on January 6th. There was a huge outcry over this so in 1975 it was moved back to February 23rd and people were still angry about it. A few areas of the country refused to comply both years. I haven’t seen to many people grumble about the extension last year. The main problem then was computer reprogramming. This wasn’t an issue in the 70s or during the last extension in 1987. Once the software was patched most people seemed to enjoy the extra hour of daylight. The main reason for the extension in 1987 and again in 2007 was to conserve energy. That might have marginally been true twenty years ago but I don’t think it is now. When I grew up most businesses turned on exterior lighting from dusk until close. Pushing sunset back an hour saved on electricty then. Now they leave a lot of lighting on all night long anyway. I used to think they were being lazy and forgetting to turn it off but its so widespread now I think it is intentional. They want to advertise that McBurgertown sign all night long even though they aren’t open. At any rate I can be out in the boat in the summer at our lake house in Iowa enjoying all the extra daylight until sunset at 9:15 pm. You can’t live on the lakes near the Phoenix metro area though and the heat really does kill the whole idea.
November 4, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Daylight Savings Time!?
That’s something I don’t don’t miss about America!
I wrote a post about it here:
http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/daylight-savings-time/
November 4, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I’d be happy to just forget about it. It’s an unnecessary complication in our already too-complicated lives. You’ll never make everybody happy anyway, so why bother.
November 4, 2008 at 10:03 pm
So let’s just collectively spring ahead and stay there.