Daylight Saving ends Sunday; how time shifts in Austin

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- This Sunday marks the end of Daylight Saving Time and beginning of Standard Time.

As the saying goes this means we "fall back" as Sunday at 2 a.m. becomes 1 a.m. giving us an extra hour of sleep that most people won't notice much until the first work day!

Dark mornings

Leading up to the beginning of Standard Time brings us our darkest mornings of the year with very late sunrises.

Saturday brings the latest sunrise of 2024 at 7:46 a.m.

Sunday's sunrise is 59 minutes earlier at 6:47 a.m., but we'll find sunrises at 7 p.m. returning on Nov. 19.

The latest sunrises of Standard Time arrive in early January as 7:28 a.m. sunrises last for a little under two weeks.

After that our sunrise starts getting earlier again and will be back before 7 a.m. in late February.

Much earlier sunsets begin Sunday

Our earliest sunsets of the year come in November! Sunday's sunset of 5:41 p.m. is only 11 minutes later than the earliest sunset of 2024 which arrives beginning Nov. 24 at 5:30 p.m.

It's not until Jan. 23, 2025 that we see our next 6 p.m. sunset and as we head into the second weekend of March we spring forward with sunsets at 7:35 p.m. in Austin.

Days will continue getting shorter

Day length this week is either side of 11 hours. We're losing a little over 1.5 min of daylight each passing day this time of year. Our shortest day is the first day of winter on Dec. 21 with just 10 hours and 11 minutes of daylight. After that our days will start gradually getting longer again.