Local

Florida still needs to turn clocks back for Daylight Saving Time Sunday

Florida will have to turn their clocks back an hour early Sunday at 2 a.m. again this year and here's why:

States do not control Daylight Saving Time. Congress does.

Florida Legislature passed the "Sunshine Protection Act" and the bill was given to Governor Rick Scott whom signed into law in March.

Even though Scott approved it, Congress would need to override existing federal law to allow the change.

If it doesn't pass by the Congressional midterm elections on November 6, the bill will have to be re-introduced into Congress in 2019.

However, no Florida official has said to the contrary that we should not set our clocks back an hour on November 4.

This is what could happen if Florida did move to permanent Daylight Saving Time:

1. Schoolkids could be walking in the dark. 

Sunrise in December, January and February would be well after 8 a.m., with the latest being at 8:24 a.m. in mid-January.

2. Your afternoon commute would likely be in the light year-round. 

The sunset, at worst, would be around 6:30 p.m. in late December and early January.

3. Year-round Daylight Saving Time would seriously change your TV habits. 

Think about it: Everything will start an hour later. The New Year's Eve ball drop would take place at 1 a.m. Florida time. That flight you booked to Boston? It would arrive an hour earlier. The Stock Market Exchange would open at 10:30 a..m. Florida time, not 9:30 a.m.

Ed Kenney, a Nassau County resident, said he doesn't care about the different TV times.

"If I want to watch it, I'll stay up," Kenney said.

4. Basically, we could call it "Florida Time," more accurately, "Atlantic Standard Time." 

“I think it’s a question of whether the federal government will approve having essentially a 5th continental time zone,” Michael Downing, author of the 2006 book “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time,” told the Palm Beach Post. “Most of the semi-serious proposals at the federal level have been to collapse time zones to three so there is less confusion.”