Hawaii Clocks Stay Put

October 29th, 2009

This is just before sunrise from my bus stop at 6 am today.  It will look pretty much the same on Monday.  Unlike most other states (and European countries), Hawaii does not observe Daylight Saving Time – there is no “fall back” this weekend and no “spring forward” in March.  When it was 6 am at my bus stop this morning, it was 10 am in Denver.  On Monday, when it is 6 am in Honolulu, it will be 9 am in Denver.

The idea behind Daylight Saving Time is to allow more sunlight in the afternoon/early evening.  At the equator, the length of days and nights doesn’t change much.  However, the farther you go in either direction from the equator, the more seasonal change there is in the length of a day compared with the duration of night.  In Denver, there are about 14 hours of daylight in July: sunrise is around 6 am and sunset is just after 8 pm.  In December, that shrinks to 9 ½ hours of daylight (between 7:30 am and 5 pm).  The difference between darkness at 5 pm and darkness at 8 pm is noticeable, and this is with DST.  Without it, the December daylight would end at 4 pm.

Hawaii is north of the equator (by about 1,470 miles), so there is a noticeable difference in daylight hours from summer to winter.  However, it isn’t nearly as radical as the mainland.  In Honolulu, the days are about 13 hours long in July and 11 hours in December.  Just a small swing of the pendulum either side of 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark.  It is enough that I catch the bus just before dawn in the winter and in sunlight during the summer months.

About the only time I think about DST these days is when calculating when to call friends and relatives on the mainland.  The time difference was a challenge when we first moved here – the phone would awaken us at hideously early hours because it was someone’s morning break in Colorado.  I told them to use this rule of thumb:  when you are having lunch, I am having breakfast.  That works as a rough guide year-round.

(See More Time in Hawaii)

Posted by Cindy Scheopner  Follow me on Twitter @Scheopner

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Entry Filed under: Customs, Practices and Pastimes, In General, Uncategorized