Heads Up - tomorrow is the worst day of the year - Fall Back

[zoesam]

The start of what I call the "Bad Time".  Be sure to set your clocks back tonight at 2AM or earlier.  

[Emerald_Door]

We get an extra hour, beautiful fall colors, and cool temperatures. Not a bad time for me. 

My glass is half full. 

[labbypaws]

Won’t be as cold walking.

[val2525]

I hate losing the sun in the evening, but it will be nice not to be getting up in the dark. I work from home so the earlier dark in the evening no longer bothers me. I used to hate it when I was working, I had to leave for work while it was still dark and it was dark when I left the office

[Desire]

This whole time of the year bothers me. Leaves were green a month ago, are now turning yellow/orange and falling off the trees. Death, that's all I can think of.  You can barely see our green lawn as the entire yard is littered with dead leaves and there are still thousands more to fall from all our old oak trees. I have several pots of mixed flowers on the deck and every few days a few more flowers are dying off, some completely gone in the cold nights we've had so far.  It's dark at 5PM now, can't stand it.  Just need to get through the holidays and onto next March because Spring will be here, greenery, flowers, birth and rebirth. JMO

[treetop]

I have bad seasonal anxiety this time of year. The daylight hours getting shorter and shorter just freaks me the hell out.

[kritter]

It got dark at 6:30 here today. Still not to bad yet but it will get darker earlier as the days go by.


Still have green leaves on some of the trees and my bougainvillea are blooming their butts off. In fact, most of my flowering plants are getting their bloom on now that it is not so hot. Our lows have been in 40s for a few nights but looks like we will be back in night time 60s for most of this week. Then 40s again with 60s and 70s during the day.

[staytuned]

We're enjoying a few warm, sunny days in the 60s before going back in 40s and possible rain/snow mix this weekend. Trees are taking their time shedding, but the weekend will probably do a lot of them in. Nekkid trees and colder temps don't really bother me as this is preparation for the dreary, freezing, snowy months ahead. The only depressing part is how early it gets dark. Today sunset was 5:15pm and will get down to around 4:30pm or earlier before winter solstice and then we'll start adding a minute or few again.

I read Ohio is getting close to doing away with Daylight Savings Time altogether. That would be nice to set clocks and watches and leave them be. I actually had to look at a YouTube video to find out how to reset my digital watch.

[jesmelric]

Nov 6, 2021 19:56:20 GMT Emerald_Door said:

We get an extra hour, beautiful fall colors, and cool temperatures. Not a bad time for me. 

My glass is half full. 

I'm with you, I guess we are in the minority lol.

[Shirley U Geste]

 

[zoesam]

Nov 6, 2021 19:56:20 GMT Emerald_Door said:

We get an extra hour, beautiful fall colors, and cool temperatures. Not a bad time for me. 

My glass is half full. 

Great for you.  I'm a night owl.  It's the worst day of the year for me.   I'm just waking up about the time the sun goes behind the mtns. 

[zoesam]

Nov 8, 2021 3:07:52 GMT staytuned said:

We're enjoying a few warm, sunny days in the 60s before going back in 40s and possible rain/snow mix this weekend. Trees are taking their time shedding, but the weekend will probably do a lot of them in. Nekkid trees and colder temps don't really bother me as this is preparation for the dreary, freezing, snowy months ahead. The only depressing part is how early it gets dark. Today sunset was 5:15pm and will get down to around 4:30pm or earlier before winter solstice and then we'll start adding a minute or few again.

I read Ohio is getting close to doing away with Daylight Savings Time altogether. That would be nice to set clocks and watches and leave them be. I actually had to look at a YouTube video to find out how to reset my digital watch.

Ughhh, having grown up there, I know how dreary it can be :-(  

IDK our official sunset time, but since the mtns are in the west here, once the sun goes behind the mtns, it's getting dark & that happened around 4:30 yesterday    Official sunset is prolly an hour later, but effective sunset is 4:30ish LOL.  Better get out & take some pics while I can! 

[Emerald_Door]

I used to be a night owl. Now it's quite the opposite. I wake up before dawn, all year round.

[zoesam]

Nov 8, 2021 20:27:48 GMT Emerald_Door said:

I used to be a night owl. Now it's quite the opposite. I wake up before dawn, all year round.

Wow, that's quite a change.  I've been a night owl since I was a teen.  Lately, I've been going to bed at 5AM LOL.  

[kritter]

[kritter]

[blissfullymiserable]

I think we're one of the few places that is unaffected by this

[val2525]

There's a bill in Congress to change to daylight savings permanently (as in all year). I don't really care what time we use, I just wish we'd dump the change from one to the other twice a year

[chapeaunoir]

Nov 8, 2021 17:03:04 GMT jesmelric said:

Nov 6, 2021 19:56:20 GMT Emerald_Door said:

We get an extra hour, beautiful fall colors, and cool temperatures. Not a bad time for me. 

My glass is half full. 

I'm with you, I guess we are in the minority lol.

I'll sit on that bench with you guys.  None of this bothers me, not even the long months of gloom we have up here, but maybe I'm just used to it. It does affect many adversely, though - common wisdom here says make sure to take vitamin D, and for those troubled with SAD a small light box can make a big difference. I've had people tell me they feel like things are closing in and in that case they've absolutely got to get outside, no matter how bad the weather - get outside, middle of the day if you can. Take walks, anything. That's pretty much what everyone does here. 

We've had a nice show of fall leaves here this year, but now the storms are coming through they're all getting beaten off so there's sludge everywhere now. 

We voted to get off the daylight savings time business, too - it makes no sense here.  People are fixated on that 'extra' hour of daylight in the evening, but studies have been done to show that it's better to stick to standard time - I mean, does it really need to start getting light at 9 a.m. here in the winter just so there's a little light in the sky at 4:30. 

[Desire]

The sunlight situation was hard for me the first time we were in Alaska back in June 2013 to get my aunt moved from the hospital into an assisted-living place. Along with the 11 hrs. it took to get there from the east coast (with plane change) and the crazy sun situation, we hit an unexpected one-in-many years heatwave. With the time-zone difference, we got there late morning, went down to the hospital, then back to the house to plan things out.  Around 8:30 PM that first night we went to K-Mart in bright sunlight, didn't think anything unusual as it was summer. We had to get furnishings for her new place and didn't get out of there until after 10:30 PM with 2-carts full. We were shocked to see the sun shining brighter than when we went in.

The first few nights were hard to adapt to. The sun was so bright until midnight, then a dusky light until 2:00 AM.  So we had only a few hours of darkness until sunrise again at 4:30 AM.  It never seemed to get pitch black, and we could hear the lawnmower going at 11:00 PM from the neighbor's house. The first night I woke about 2:00 AM hearing voices outside. My sister and DS were out on the deck, it was still light out, we kept saying we couldn't believe it.

In winter it's the complete opposite, it gets dark at 3:30 PM in the afternoon, and the sun doesn't rise again until 10:00 AM in the morning. So you only have around 5.5 hours of daylight in December. That was worse for me when we were there in December than having the sun shining all night in June. It was like the entire day was a waste.

[57roses]

[jesmelric]

Nov 10, 2021 15:40:10 GMT Desire said:

The sunlight situation was hard for me the first time we were in Alaska back in June 2013 to get my aunt moved from the hospital into an assisted-living place. Along with the 11 hrs. it took to get there from the east coast (with plane change) and the crazy sun situation, we hit an unexpected one-in-many years heatwave. With the time-zone difference, we got there late morning, went down to the hospital, then back to the house to plan things out.  Around 8:30 PM that first night we went to K-Mart in bright sunlight, didn't think anything unusual as it was summer. We had to get furnishings for her new place and didn't get out of there until after 10:30 PM with 2-carts full. We were shocked to see the sun shining brighter than when we went in.

The first few nights were hard to adapt to. The sun was so bright until midnight, then a dusky light until 2:00 AM.  So we had only a few hours of darkness until sunrise again at 4:30 AM.  It never seemed to get pitch black, and we could hear the lawnmower going at 11:00 PM from the neighbor's house. The first night I woke about 2:00 AM hearing voices outside. My sister and DS were out on the deck, it was still light out, we kept saying we couldn't believe it.

In winter it's the complete opposite, it gets dark at 3:30 PM in the afternoon, and the sun doesn't rise again until 10:00 AM in the morning. So you only have around 5.5 hours of daylight in December. That was worse for me when we were there in December than having the sun shining all night in June. It was like the entire day was a waste.

Wow that sounds so awful. It must take people a long time to get used to it if they aren't from there. At  my age I don't think I could ever get used to it. The clocks went back Saturday and right now our sunrise is 6:43 am and sunset 5:28 pm. I am curious what those times are elsewhere?

[57roses]

DH was born and raised in Alaska. I have been there in the summer when it is still light out at 2 am. It's kinda neat but I would not like to live there during the dark, long, cold winters.

DH said it was wierd to experience it being dark and warm at the same time when he moved to the lower 48.

[chapeaunoir]

I knew someone who lived up in Fairbanks - she said you end up kind of staying up all day and all night in the summer, though people have special light-blocking blinds on their windows. It's hard to keep track of time unless you've always lived there. When I was on the south Island of New Zealand, I had gone down to the southern tip. It was June, so winter there. I was hiking up Ben Lomond and the sun was dipping at 1:30 when I started back down to base - there was snow and I was having to really hustle. It was so dark by the time I finally finished that I was having trouble seeing. At least the twilights are long. Near the tropics the sun just goes plonk and you get about 5 minutes of sunset lol.

[labbypaws]

My friend's husband was military and stationed there (Alaska) for several years.

[zoesam]

Nov 10, 2021 15:40:10 GMT Desire said:

The sunlight situation was hard for me the first time we were in Alaska back in June 2013 to get my aunt moved from t he hospital into an assisted-living place. Along with the 11 hrs. it took to get there from the east coast (with plane change) and the crazy sun situation, we hit an unexpected one-in-many years heatwave. With the time-zone difference, we got there late morning, went down to the hospital, then back to the house to plan things out.  Around 8:30 PM that first night we went to K-Mart in bright sunlight, didn't think anything unusual as it was summer. We had to get furnishings for her new place and didn't get out of there until after 10:30 PM with 2-carts full. We were shocked to see the sun shining brighter than when we went in.

The first few nights were hard to adapt to. The sun was so bright until midnight, then a dusky light until 2:00 AM.  So we had only a few hours of darkness until sunrise again at 4:30 AM.  It never seemed to get pitch black, and we could hear the lawnmower going at 11:00 PM from the neighbor's house. The first night I woke about 2:00 AM hearing voices outside. My sister and DS were out on the deck, it was still light out, we kept saying we couldn't believe it.

In winter it's the complete opposite, it gets dark at 3:30 PM in the afternoon, and the sun doesn't rise again until 10:00 AM in the morning. So you only have around 5.5 hours of daylight in December. That was worse for me when we were there in December than having the sun shining all night in June. It was like the entire day was a waste.

It's so disorienting up there!  I've spent a fair amount of time there, 5 trips I think, both Summer & Winter.   In the Summer on a vacation trip, DH & I were really late eating dinner one night, like 10PM & the sun was still high in the sky, which just felt weird & wrong, it really messes with you, when you;re not used to it.  So we find a pizza joint & it's closer to 10:30 at this point, the parking lot is jam packed.  We don't really think too much of it b/c I figure they serve alcohol & probably had a bar too.  Get in there & it's packed full of people eating dinner & there are a million children racing around the place.  It was so weird.  Of course, that's about the most normal thing in AK    It is an interesting place 

[zoesam]

jesmelric Here it's Sunrise 6:39AM, Sunset at 4:48PM, but the mountain range is west, so the horizon is hidden & therefore, the sunset appears even earlier 

One thing I miss about Mpls is how in the Summer it would stay light til 9:30PM.  DH says I need a Summer place in AK & a Winter place in Ushuaia or Patagonia.  I'm down :-)