This is the shortest weekend of the year as daylight saving time arrives in Philly

Nothing says that a tepid winter in Philly is toast more eloquently than a 7:04 p.m. sunset.

That’s what time the sun will call it a day around here on Sunday, about 16 hours after the clocks jumped from 1:59:59999 a.m. to 3 a.m. and daylight saving time began anew.

What’s different this time around is that this existential instant happened without so much as a congressional revival of the so-called Sunshine Protection Act for year-round daylight saving time.

Do not expect the twice-a-year clock-change ritual to be a presidential campaign issue, but for the record, when he was president, Donald J. Trump did say he would sign a DST-all-the-time bill if Congress passed it. Voters appear to like the later sunsets more than a lot of medical experts, who hold that they are a circadian nightmare.

But six years after Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) introduced his sunshine act, the movement for year-round daylight saving time, which appeared to be gaining momentum two years ago when the Senate approved it unanimously, evidently has hit a speed hump.

While surveys suggest that among U.S. citizens the clock-change system is about as popular as the average tax increase, they evidently are at peace with the inertia over doing anything about it.

So, after one mightily soggy week, expect a groggy Monday. For those who resent the loss of a precious weekend hour and the loss of earlier sunrises to later sunsets, Jill Lamar, a Center City therapist, has this advice: Get over it. And all indications are that her advice will apply in March 2025.

» READ MORE: The power of naps ... short ones, that is.

Our latest encounter with standard time ends after a mere 127 days, which includes the extra leap-year day. Daylight saving time will consume 239 days. The imbalance is the result of a trend of expanding the latter at the expense of the former, the most recent adjustment in 2007. By contrast, in 1966, when Congress created the current time zones, the year was divided nearly evenly, with the nation on standard time from the last Sunday in October to the last Sunday in April.

Daylight saving time started in the United States on March 31, 1918, two years after it began in Germany as a war-conservation effort, according to the Library of Congress. In 1919, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, it was repealed, and time change became a matter of local option, until World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared “war time” in 1942, which essentially was year-round daylight time.

That ended in September 1945, and once again time change varied among the states for the next 20 years, suggesting that war time wasn’t universally embraced. The nation tried year-round daylight saving time during the 1973-74 energy crisis, and it was so unpopular it lasted all of 10 months.

During the last several years, state lawmakers nationwide have introduced more than 550 time-change resolutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, with 28 added to the pile this year, said Jim Reed, the group’s director of environment, energy, and transportation. Pennsylvania has four in the works, including one in the Senate calling for putting Pennsylvania in the same time zone as Bermuda. The Oregon Senate recently passed a bill endorsing year-round standard time. However, it stipulated that wouldn’t happen unless Washington and California did the same.

Among those heartily endorsing the later sunsets are golfers; youth-sports programs; restaurants with outdoor dining; and the candy industry, which doesn’t mind at all that it stays light later on Halloween. After a rash of scares about alleged candy-tampering, the sweets lobby impressed upon Congress that trick-or-treating in daylight was an important safety measure, author Michael Downing wrote in his book, Spring Forward.

Chronobiologists — those who study our daily bodily rhythms — and just about every major sleep-medicine group in the country believes pushing the clocks forward is a dangerous idea. The longer days, they argue, interfere with sleep, depriving bodies of melatonin, the sleep hormone that the body produces in the dark. People who live in the western fringes of time zones get the worst of it. In Marquette, Mich., for example, the sun won’t set on the summer solstice until 9:45 p.m.

» READ MORE: Circadian rhythms are important to health, including for medication schedules

For those who start work early, the later sunrises may mean they lose the best light of the day, but try to get what you can as early as possible, the experts advise. While it is true that sun will be staying up later, toward sunset it will have lost considerable potency and evening light is not in a league with first light, says Phyllis C. Zee, neurology professor at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.

In the early morning, the light “is a different spectrum,” Zee said, and is “more alerting. Light is a powerful drug. Try to get out as early as possible upon awakening.”

» READ MORE: Seasonal affective disorder and changing light can affect people even in summer

Jill Lamar, with Thriveworks in Philadelphia, concurs. She added that Monday’s inevitable irritability “dissipates after a few days.” She recommends going to bed the same time every night, even on weekends, and to avoid long naps during the day, and eating and drinking three or four hours before going to bed. And admit that the time has changed.

“You have to accept it. It’s going to happen no matter how you feel about it.”