British summer time

This time of year we change the time on our clocks by putting them forward an hour. This is known as British Summer time, or daylight saving time. It was introduced during the second World War when the idea was that farmers and workers would have an extra hour in the evening to do their work. The time changes back to Greenwich mean time in the autumn to bring us back in line with the normal time on the planet. The government did try and keep British Summer time for the whole year back in the early 1970’s because it was found there would be less road traffic accidents in the evenings when children were coming home from school, but there were complaints the sun didn’t rise in Scotland (which is in the far north of Britain) till around 10am.

As the northern spring starts there is a high pressure zone over us and air is being drawn down from the Arctic. So we are expecting cold weather in the next few days ( not that anyone is going out at the moment….).

I live in the UK and the clocks are due to go back at two am tomorrow night, that means :

Advantage… Extra hour in bed

Disadvantage….. The sun sets an hour earlier. The winter blues set in. I hate it when the sun sets before 5pm. It takes ages for it to set later than that in the winter. It’s so depressing. Why? Because the Earth is tipped by about 23? degrees. That means in the winter the sun rises further south east, curves in an arc further south than in summer and sets further south west. The hours it is visible in the sky are less. (in the summer around here the sun can set about 11pm and rise about 3am!).

Cold and dark, shivering, chilly. Even now you can feel the year dwindling.

And… WORDPRESS changes from one day to the next at midnight. Not 1am as it does in the summer. That means I have an hour less time in the evening to post before the clock ticks into the next day….

Drat…

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: British summer time

Clocks, going back tomorrow night.