Hello, sunsets before 5 p.m. South Sound enters the short, dark days of winter

Here we go, South Sound, into the big dark.

On Sunday, we dropped back an hour with the end of daylight saving time, and you’ll notice sunset is coming a lot sooner.

“The sunset is going to be around 4:43. It’s 5:44 today,” meteorologist Dana Felton with the National Weather Service told The News Tribune Saturday.

All of this is the slow march to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, Dec. 21, which will bring eight hours, 28 minutes and 29 seconds of daylight to Tacoma.

And then the slow climb back begins, though incremental.

The end of December only brings about a daylight gain of about four minutes, according to Felton. But, come January, noticeable shifts start to kick in.

“On January 1, there’s eight hours and 34 minutes of daylight, and by the end of the month, there’s nine hours and 34 minutes,” Felton said.

“February it starts out with nine hours and 37 seconds and it ends with 11 hours and two minutes,” he added.

And while Washington is among 19 states who’ve already either enacted legislation or voted to support year-round daylight saving time, Congress has still not acted on the Sunshine Protection Act, which is sponsored by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Without that, states can only move to permanent standard time without federal approval, under the Uniform Time Act of 1966.

Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and most of Arizona do not switch to daylight-saving time.

And though everyone seems to agree the whole spring forward, fall back approach is tiresome, there’s no clear consensus which one to stick with when you ask the general public.

According to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll of 1,083 adults Oct. 21-25, 43 percent wanted to stick with standard time year-round. Thirty-two percent said they would prefer DST year round.

A quarter of those surveyed said they were happy with the way things are now.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 12:26 PM.