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What Permanent DST Could Mean for West Michigan

With the U.S. Senate passing a bill to make DST permanent, what impacts could that have on West Michigan? Meteorologist Michael Behrens takes a look!

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — In a rare bit of bipartisanship and solidarity out of the U.S. Senate this week, the body unanimously approved a measure to keep the country on daylight saving time year round. 

Michigan Senator Gary Peters said the following about the bill: 

“I believe it makes the most practical sense to have one time system – as opposed to changing our clocks twice a year. The Sunshine Protection Act unanimously passed the Senate and now heads to the House of Representatives.”

RELATED: Senate passes bill to make daylight saving time permanent

The will to keep the U.S. from changing our clocks is strong and seemingly across all walks of life. In fact, 28 states are considering new or 2021 carryover bills addressing daylight saving time.  

Michigan has already passed a bill in the House to switch to full time DST as long as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania also made that switch. The bill passed the House in April 2021, but remains in a Senate committee as of writing. 

While it is tempting to only think about the positive impacts of such a move, like long summer evenings and never seeing a sunset before 6 p.m., the change would have some drawbacks as well. This would be felt particularly by school-aged children and teens who walk to school or the bus stop. 

The reason being these students would see a much larger proportion of the year with these commutes on foot taking place before sunrise. 

Currently, we only see this happen from roughly Oct. 20 through Nov. 5, then we fall back, with darkness returning from Dec. 9 through Jan. 27. Under permanent DST, we would see sunrise after 8 a.m. from roughly Oct. 20 through March 10. 

We would see a jump from roughly 67 mornings dark until 8 a.m. to 142 under permanent DST. 

Credit: Michael Behrens
The number of mornings that will see a sunrise after 8 p.m. if we switch to full time DST.

While the matter is waiting to be taken up by the House of Representatives, many just want the time changes to stop and now, that is one step closer to happening. We will need to watch where this legislation goes from here. 

-- Meteorologist Michael Behrens

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Email me at: MBehrens@13OnYourSide.com

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