Halloween Gets an Extra Hour This Year: Clocks Fall Back at 2 A.M. Sunday as Daylight Saving Time Ends
Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, November 1 — the first time the clock change has landed the morning after a Saturday Halloween since 2020, and, on the current calendar, the last until 2037.
San Antonio gets an extra hour this weekend, and it arrives at the end of Halloween night. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, November 1, when clocks move back one hour to 1 a.m., according to USA Today's Friday report on the change, read in full this cycle. The change marks the return to standard time, gives Americans an extra hour of sleep, and brings earlier sunsets and more daylight each morning as winter approaches. Because the change happens after midnight, it does not cut into Halloween itself — trick-or-treating on Saturday, October 31, runs on daylight time, and the extra hour lands afterward, for revelers to celebrate longer or sleep it off.
The pairing is rare. Halloween and the end of daylight saving time overlap this year for the first time since 2020, the year of COVID, and will not happen again until 2037, according to Today as cited in the report — leap years in 2028, 2032 and 2036 shift the day of the week, and the next Saturday Halloween comes after more than a decade. November 1 is also the earliest date the annual change can fall: since 2007, daylight saving time has begun on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November.
The twice-yearly switch survives another year. The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent, passed the U.S. House in July by a 308-117 vote, the report said, but has since failed to clear the Senate, which is in an extended election recess — so the bill has not reached President Donald Trump's desk, and no law has taken effect that cancels Sunday's switch. The governing law remains the Uniform Time Act of 1966, and only Congress can change it. For San Antonio households, the practical list is the familiar one: phones and computers change themselves, wall clocks, car clocks and appliances get set back before bed Saturday night — and Sunday evening, and Election Day evening after it, will get dark about an hour earlier than this week did.
