Sunday marks the return from Daylight Saving Time back to Standard Time; you should set your clocks back one hour before going to bed on Saturday night, before the time change beginning at 2:00 a.m.

The good news is you’ll get an extra hour of sleep in the morning on Sunday; but you may be confused for a while, as you get used to the sun setting earlier and find yourself recalculating what time it is now from what time it was the day before.

Daylight Saving Time is observed in 48 states and the District of Columbia; Hawaii remains on its own Standard Time all year round, as does Arizona with the exception of the Navajo Nation.

No U.S. dependencies follow Daylight Saving Time.

It’s also common in Europe and parts of the Southern Hemisphere; but countries near the Equator don’t use it, because sunlight there doesn’t vary enough to make it worthwhile.

Changing your clocks is also a good reminder for people to check smoke alarms in their residences to ensure they’re working properly.

Energizer and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, or IAFC, are partnering to encourage families to change the batteries in smoke alarms and CO detectors, a task that doubles a family’s chance of surviving a home fire, according to a news release by the program.

“The habit of changing batteries during clock-changes is an easy task that can be the difference between life and death,” Chief Jeffrey D. Johnson, president of the IAFC, said in the release.

A home fire death occurs approximately every three hours in the United States, killing 540 children each year, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

Ninety-six percent of families in the U.S. have smoke alarms, but 19 percent of the detectors do not work, Johnson said. A smoke alarm provides extra time for people to escape a fire so it crucial that batteries are changed often.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)