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Daylight Savings time

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Forced to go to bed at my usual “bedtime” of 7 p.m., I caught a glimpse of daylight shining through the window by my bed. I jumped up and insisted I’d been duped.

“What’s goin’ on here, the sun’s still up, y’all’s watches must be wrong,” I said to my parents.

They made me crawl back into bed and tried to explain the concept of Daylight Saving Time. This didn’t just happen Saturday, it was about 40 years ago.

I cried myself to sleep, wondering why our government would be so cruel as to have everyone change their clocks so that kids would have to go to bed when the sun is still shining. My heart sank just like the sunset I watched that evening outside my window.

It was unfair for me to blame the government, however.

Although the Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardized the start and end dates for daylight saving time, no federal rule mandates that states or territories observe daylight saving time according to National Geographic.

While we in Mississippi and most other states all set our clocks ahead one hour Saturday night or this morning, people in Hawaii and Arizona did not. They stick to standard time year-round. People in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands don’t observe daylight saving time either.

People all over the world have tinkered with the concept of Daylight Saving Time for more than 100 years, with various excuses, like that it saves on the use of fuel, that it’s safer because fewer accidents happen, and that there is less crime during Daylight Saving Time. But, the most honest explanation for it appears to be that William Willett liked golf.

Willett, who aggressively lobbied for Great Britain to institute Daylight Saving Time in the early 1900s (they call it Summer Time over there), hated having to cut his afternoon golf games short and sunrise came too early in the morning for him.

In his pamphlet, “The Waste of Daylight,” published in 1907, Willett wrote: “Everyone appreciates the long light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early mornings, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used.”

Sadly, he died before anyone took his idea seriously enough to put it into action.

World War I and World War II can share credit for the popularity of Daylight Saving Time to help save fuel and extend production for the war effort.

Since the 1960s the U.S. has pushed Daylight Saving Time back and extended it so many times that now it is the standard rather than standard time, which we only operate under during January, February, November and December.

Maybe we should change the name of Daylight Saving Time to Daylight Standard Time, and during those other four months it would be Daylight Doesn’t Matter It’s Cold Outside Time.

Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him at

sgillespie@themeridianstar.com

Windy!

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It’s a windy, rainy day here in Ocean City!  You would have to be a pretty crazy golfer to be out in this!  Only Man O War and Nutters Crossing are open though.  Lighthouse Sound, Rum Pointe and War Admiral are all closed for aerification.  Hopefully the boys can still get the job done out there!

grass roots weather update

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Subject: grass roots weather update 4:30 pm 3/4 Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 16:34:07 -0500

Good Afternoon:

 

It still looks as though a major winter storm is going to impact inland areas of the mid Atlantic region, and it also looks as though the storm will be able to turn the corner enough to spread snow a little further northward up the coast than it appeared this morning.  The I-81 corridor from Staunton to Harrisburg, as well as the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and southwestern Pennsylvania will see  the greatest amounts of snow, on the order of 10 to as much as 20 inches…the highest amounts will be found in the mountains, as temperatures will be flirting with 32 enough in the lower elevations to cause some settling/melting of the snow as it falls.  In the D.C. area, I still think that it will be mostly rain to the EAST of I-95, with a change to rain late in the storm causing the quick accumulation of 2- 4 inches.  Outside the Beltway (as well as west of Baltimore) on the west side of town, heavy, wet snow will accumulate to 8 to 12 inches, causing major travel issues, as well as potential powder outages, due to the combination of the weight of the snow and anticipated winds.  After the initial storm tracks from the Midwest to Kentucky and weakens, a secondary storm will take shape somewhere between Norfolk and the North Carolina border.  Very strong winds will develop along the coast, causing erosion and some tidal flooding at the time of high tides.

 

Now, in this morning’s update, I indicated that the snow would have a tough time accumulating to any great degree up towards Philadelphia/Wilmington and especially further north to New York and southern New England.  I now believe that the blocking pattern will relent enough to allow the storm to turn slightly northeastward rather than simply move eastward and out to sea.  That will bring a light to moderate snowfall to southeastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and the southern half of New Jersey.  Amounts on the order of 3 to 5 inches can be expected…this area will also see temperatures a touch above freezing, and some rain could fall initially, and that could cut these amounts somewhat.  Northern New Jersey, metro New York and southern New England will be on the fringe of the storm, but light accumulations on the order of 1 (NW) to 4 (SE) inches could fall around New York, with anywhere from 3 to 6 inches over eastern Long Island and southern New England…tapering to an inch or two once up to southern Vermont and southern New Hampshire.  It is worth pointing out that the GFS computer model is printing out 2 feet of snow in metro Boston with this storm.  I just don’t believe it at this point.  I will be monitoring the development of the first storm as it moves through the Midwest, and will update again tomorrow morning.  The precip will begin later tomorrow in the mid Atlantic, but Wednesday  and Thursday will be the most unsettled days of this week in the Northeast, so we have another day to fine tune any accumulations.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to call or email me.  Also, if you haven’t already looked at the video pattern overview that I issued this afternoon, please take a look and learn why I don’t believe that there is much of a chance of any sort of early spring this year.

Regards,

Herb Stevens

Grass Roots Weather