Daylight saving time

Channing King
The Indianapolis Star

If this week’s weather hasn’t tipped you off, spring is almost here. While the season doesn’t officially begin until March 19 this year, it unofficially starts Sunday.

That’s right: It’s time to spring forward with daylight saving time! It’s the Picard Maneuver of chronology.

At 2 a.m. Sunday, time will skip ahead to 3 a.m. Most clocks you deal with, such as your smartphone that pulls its time from a remote server, are automated and require no effort on your part. Other clocks around your house or car (e.g., your microwave or bedside alarm clock) will need to be changed manually. To make it easier on yourself, you should do most of those Saturday night before going to sleep.

While our robot overlords have no problem with this change, we humans do because we lose an hour of sleep in exchange for shifting an hour of daylight from the start of the day to the end. Young children have a particularly hard time with the change as they rely more on their internal clocks than physical ones. Experts suggest you start making the adjustment for them before the actual time change.

Besides resetting clocks, fire departments recommend you use the time change as a reminder to make sure your smoke detectors work, replacing batteries where needed.

Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, when we get an extra hour of sleep.