Sunday marks the end of Daylight Saving Time.  We turn our clocks back one hour at 2:00 AM.  It’s also a good time to do a safety check, by testing smoke alarms and changing their batteries if they have them.  The time change allows us to get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning, but it also means much earlier sunrise and sunset times.  Starting Sunday afternoon we’ll have sunsets that happen before 5:00 PM, meaning the evening commute will be in the dark, starting Monday.

The end of Daylight Saving Time leads to sunset times in Chicago that occur in the 4 o’clock hour from now until late January and it won’t be until we spring ahead next March, that we’ll see sunset times after 6 PM.  There is more daylight in the mornings, however.  If we did not turn back the clocks, or if Daylight Saving Time was made permanent, sunrise times in Chicago would be as late as the 8 o’clock hour from early December through early February.  Other parts of the country would have sunrises that occurred as late as 9:30-10:00 AM.