Trego's Mountain Ear

Despite the fact that Montana’s legislature passed the sunshine protection act making daylight saving time permanent, clocks will still “fall back” next weekend. While federal law allows Montana to stay permanently on standard time, no such provision exists for daylight savings time.

While Montana and many of our surrounding states have voted to make daylight saving time permanent, actually doing so depends on the federal government. The Sunshine Protection act is introduced yearly at the federal level, but has yet to go anywhere.

In the meantime- this graph (shamelessly borrowed from the sleep foundation) suggests what things might look like if it ever does:

Some observations about what this would look like, if the federal government did allow the change:

• When a state that is always in daylight saving time called a state that is always on standard time, the difference would be constant
  • Montana and Arizona would always be an hour different, despite sharing a time zone
• When a state that is always in daylight saving time called a state that is sometimes on daylight saving time, they would have the usual difference in time zone for part of the year (when daylight savings time is active)
  • If the state on standard time is “ahead”, when they leave daylight saving time the difference will decrease by an hour
    • During daylight saving time, Iowa would be an hour ahead of Montana. When daylight saving time ends, the time would be the same in both states.
  • If the state on standard time is “behind”, when they leave daylight saving time the difference will increase by an hour
    • During daylight saving time, California is an hour behind Montana. The rest of the year, California would be an additional hour behind Montana.