As fall rolls in, we are a little over a month away from falling back and changing our clocks to get one more hour of sleep and less daylight.
Daylight saving time has been tossed through the halls of Congress for years now, with lawmakers undecided on whether or not to “lock the clock.” However, a decision on whether to abolish it hasn’t been reached, so we will still fall back in 2025.
Here’s when the time will change this fall and a little history about the origin of daylight saving time.
Where do leaves change color in Florida? See 2025 fall foliage maps, when the leaves change
When is the time change? When we fall back, reset clocks in 2025
The next time change is coming up in November, which sounds far away, but is creeping up in a little over one month.
Daylight saving time for 2025 began at 2 a.m. EDT on Sunday, March 9, 2025. It will end when we fall back at 2 a.m. EST on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025.
When is the first day of fall? Fall 2025 has officially begun
Fall has officially begun, despite the fact that the autumn cool-down has yet to hit the Sunshine State.
The meteorological start of fall 2025 was on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 1, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Every year, meteorological fall starts on Sept. 1 and ends on Nov. 30.
There are two equinoxes and two solstices each year. Equinoxes occur during the fall and spring and are called the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. They mark the first astronomical day of spring and the first astronomical day of fall each year.
The astronomical start of the 2025 fall season was on Monday, Sept. 22, with the autumnal equinox.
Is daylight saving time coming to an end permanently? Did the daylight saving bill pass?
Nearly 20 states have passed legislation in recent years to support getting rid of the time change, but the debate is divided on whether there should be more daylight hours during the morning or the evening.
President Donald Trump expressed support for keeping daylight saving time hours in April, calling it “very popular,’’ though he has also referred to the move as a “50-50 issue,” according to USA TODAY.
Legislation surrounding keeping daylight saving time has been batted around the halls of Congress for years. Florida has tried several times to make DST permanent with the proposed federal Sunshine Protection Act, which has been introduced to Congress multiple times since 2018 – most recently in 2025 – without being passed.
What does DST stand for? Is it called daylight saving or savings?
“DST” is an abbreviation for daylight saving time.
Many people pluralize the phrase to say “daylight savings time.” The correct way to spell and say it is the singular version of the phrase: daylight saving time.
What was the original purpose of the time change?
Although the earliest known proposal to “save” daylight came from Benjamin Franklin’s “An Economical Project,” in 1784, he’s not the reason we observe the time change today.
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the first true proponent of daylight saving time was a London builder named William Willet, who “noticed that the shutters of houses were tightly closed even though the sun had risen” while he was riding his horse on an early morning in 1907.
“Willet spent a small fortune lobbying businessmen, members of Parliament, and the U.S. Congress to put clocks ahead 20 minutes on each of the four Sundays in April and reverse the process on consecutive Sundays in September. But his proposal was met mostly with ridicule,” the almanac says.
It wasn’t until World War I that countries started adopting the concept to conserve fuel and resources. The Germans were the first to adopt the system in 1915, Britain followed in 1916 and the U.S. started observing the time change in 1918, when Congress passed its “Standard Time Act” that established time zones.
“Many Americans viewed the practice as an absurd attempt to make late sleepers get up early. Others thought following ‘clock time’ was unnatural instead of ‘sun time.’ A columnist in the Saturday Evening Post offered this alternative: ‘Why not ‘save summer’ by having June begin at the end of February?'” according to the almanac.
“The matter took on new meaning in April 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson declared war. Suddenly, energy conservation was paramount, and several efforts were launched to enlist public support for changing the clocks.”
A common daylight saving time misconception is that it was created to help farmers have more daylight hours to complete their work outdoors. But the opposite is actually true.
At the time daylight saving time was adopted in the U.S. — during World War I — farmers were the strongest opponents of this time change. They didn’t like having to do their early-morning farm chores in the dark.
“Many Americans wrongly point to farmers as the driving force behind Daylight Saving Time. In fact, farmers were its strongest opponents and, as a group, stubbornly resisted the change from the beginning,” according to the almanac.
“When the war ended, the farmers and working-class people who had held their tongues began speaking out. They demanded an end to Daylight Saving Time, claiming it benefited only office workers and the leisure class. The controversy spotlighted the growing gap between rural and urban dwellers.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Time change coming soon. Here’s when daylight saving time ends