Clocks Fall Back Sunday at 2 A.M.: Daylight Saving Time Ends November 1, the Earliest Date Possible, With the Sunshine Protection Act Still Stalled in the Senate
Houston gains an hour of sleep this weekend and loses an hour of evening light - and the law that would have ended the twice-yearly change passed the House in July and never got a Senate vote.
HOUSTON - Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, November 1, when clocks across Texas and most of the United States move back one hour to 1 a.m., the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported Friday. It is the earliest date the annual fall-back can fall: since 2007, daylight saving time has begun on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November, and in 2026 that first Sunday is November 1 itself. Houston gains an hour of sleep, and sunset arrives an hour earlier by the clock from Sunday onward.
This year's change lands in the middle of a live argument in Washington. The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide and end the twice-yearly clock changes, passed the U.S. House in a bipartisan vote in July, USA Today reported. The bill then stalled in the Senate, lawmakers left Washington without taking it up, and no change was enacted into law - so the fall-back proceeds on the schedule set by the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time at all; the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, does.
For Houston the practical file is short. Phones and computers change themselves; ovens, microwaves, car clocks and wall clocks do not. The extra hour lands at 2 a.m. Sunday - after Halloween night and before the last weekend of the midterm campaign - and Election Day itself, Tuesday, November 3, runs on standard time, with polls in Harris County open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Unless Congress acts, clocks spring forward again on Sunday, March 14, 2027, and the next fall-back is November 7, 2027.
