Daylight saving time in Washington and the 2019 law on hold

Washington's clocks fall back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, 2026, which ends daylight saving time in Enumclaw and the rest of the state until 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 14, 2027. The state still changes its clocks because federal law lets a state stay on standard time all year but does not let it stay on daylight time. A 2019 Washington law would make Pacific daylight time permanent once Congress allows it, and as of October 20, 2026, Congress has not.

The Legislature's final votes on that law in April 2019 were 46 to 2 in the Senate and 90 to 6 in the House, and it has waited on Congress ever since. In 2026 British Columbia stopped waiting. Its last clock change was March 8, so when Washington falls back on November 1, Vancouver will not, and until March 14, 2027 the clocks in Seattle will read an hour behind the ones in Vancouver.

When do the clocks change in Washington in 2026 and 2027?

The clocks change at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, 2026, when 2 a.m. becomes 1 a.m. and that hour happens twice, and again at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 14, 2027, when 2 a.m. jumps to 3 a.m. As of October 2026 the rule is the same every year in federal law (15 U.S.C. 260a) and in Washington's RCW 1.20.051: daylight time starts at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November. By that rule the next changes after those are Sunday, November 7, 2027, then Sunday, March 12 and Sunday, November 5, 2028.

The fall change lands on the last day of this site's six-week fall calendar for the plateau, and November 1 is also the first day studded tires are legal in Washington.

Why can't Washington just keep daylight saving time?

The Uniform Time Act of 1966, the federal law that sets daylight time, lets a state opt out of it but not stay in it year-round. Under 15 U.S.C. 260a a state in one time zone may exempt itself by law, but only by keeping the whole state on standard time during the months daylight time would run. The U.S. Department of Transportation says a state that does observe daylight time must follow the federal start and end dates. The Legislature put the result in writing in RCW 1.20.052: under federal law as it stood on July 28, 2019, "states are not permitted to observe daylight saving time year-round."

What did Washington's 2019 daylight saving law do?

It wrote permanent daylight time into the state code, then left it on hold until Congress allows it. Substitute House Bill 1196 became chapter 297 of the Laws of 2019 when the governor signed it on May 8, 2019. Its main section, RCW 1.20.055, would put the whole state on "Pacific daylight time throughout the calendar year," which is Pacific standard time advanced one hour, and the same law would also repeal the state's two older daylight time laws, RCW 1.20.050 and 1.20.051, which came from the 1952 and 1960 ballot initiatives.

Those sections have what the law calls a contingent effective date, meaning they start only after something else happens: federal authorization to observe daylight time year-round. They then start on the first Sunday in November after the authorization takes effect, with one catch. An authorization that takes effect on or after October 1 but before the first Sunday in November waits until the first Sunday in November of the following year. Whether a particular federal bill would count as that authorization is a legal question this article does not try to answer.

Did Congress pass the Sunshine Protection Act?

The House passed it, and as of October 20, 2026, the Senate had not voted. The Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, H.R. 139, passed the House 308 to 117 on July 14, 2026, by the House Clerk's Roll Call 238, and was referred to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on July 15, 2026. The Senate's roll-call list shows no vote on it through September 30, and its tentative schedule lists October 5 through November 6 as a state work period, when it expects no legislative business.

The bill's official title uses the spelling daylight savings time. Its text repeals the section of the Uniform Time Act that sets the March-to-November daylight period and amends the 1918 Calder Act, which sets the time zones, to move each zone's standard time one hour later. A state that had already exempted itself could keep its old standard time.

Washington's ten House members split six to four. Michael Baumgartner, Suzan DelBene, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Emily Randall, Kim Schrier and Marilyn Strickland voted yes, and Pramila Jayapal, Rick Larsen, Dan Newhouse and Adam Smith voted no. The Census Bureau's district lookup puts Enumclaw in Washington's 8th Congressional District, so its representative in the 119th Congress, Schrier, a Democrat, voted yes.

Is Washington getting rid of daylight saving time?

The Legislature has voted to stop the clock changes, but only by staying on daylight time and only once Congress allows it. Two bills that would instead move the state to permanent standard time, which federal law already lets a state do, have not moved. House Bill 2119 was referred to the House State Government and Tribal Relations Committee on January 12, 2026, and Senate Bill 5001 was reintroduced that day and retained in committee. As of October 20, 2026, the Legislature's bill pages show no hearing or vote for either one in the 2025-26 session.

Why will Vancouver be an hour ahead of Seattle after November 1?

Most of British Columbia now keeps daylight time all year, and Washington does not. The province's Interpretation Amendment Act became law in 2019, but the government held it back to coordinate with neighboring U.S. states. On March 2, 2026 the province announced that the clock change on Sunday, March 8, 2026 would be its last. The year-round time in its Pacific time zone, which takes in Vancouver, is called Pacific time, abbreviated PCT, and runs seven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the world's reference time, the same offset Washington uses in summer.

Washington's winter time is eight hours behind UTC under 15 U.S.C. 261, so from November 1, 2026 to March 14, 2027 Vancouver and the rest of B.C.'s Pacific time zone run an hour ahead of Seattle, and the two line up again when Washington springs forward. Premier David Eby said in the March 2, 2026 announcement, "I am hopeful that our American neighbours will soon join us in ending disruptive time changes."

What would permanent daylight time do to sunrise and sunset in Enumclaw?

It would push both an hour later on the clock from November to March. By the U.S. Naval Observatory's figures for downtown Enumclaw, the sun rises at 7:52 a.m. and sets at 4:21 p.m. on the winter solstice, Monday, December 21, 2026, and year-round Pacific daylight time would make that 8:52 a.m. and 5:21 p.m. The earliest sunset, 4:18 p.m., falls on every day from December 6 through 15, and the latest sunrise, 7:55 a.m., on December 31, 2026 and on January 1 and 2, 2027; permanent daylight time would make them 5:18 p.m. and 8:55 a.m. The clock change itself moves sunset on the clock from 5:53 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, 2026 to 4:51 p.m. on Sunday, November 1.

Local rules run on that sun, not on the clock. Enumclaw's municipal code closes city parks half an hour after sunset, with a 10 p.m. exception at Boise Creek Park on nights with scheduled ball games, and King County's code sets the same closing for county parks and regional trails such as the Foothills Trail. By those figures the closing time drops from about 6:23 p.m. on October 31 to about 5:21 p.m. on November 1, and to about 4:48 p.m. in early and mid December; under permanent daylight time the earliest closing would be about 5:48 p.m. HistoryLink reports that during War Time, the all-year daylight time Congress ordered from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945, late sunrises in winter worried Seattle's school board, which twice asked Congress to roll it back during the school year.

Did Washington ever ban daylight saving time?

Washington banned it by initiative in 1952. Initiative 181, sponsored by the Washington State Grange, barred any county, city or other local government from adopting daylight time, except by the governor's proclamation in a wartime emergency or when a national time was set, and it won 60 percent of the vote on November 4, 1952. The Secretary of State's results archive counts 597,558 votes for and 397,928 against. Voters approved Initiative 210, which brought daylight time back, in 1960, 596,135 to 556,623, or 51.7 percent. Congress's Uniform Time Act then set national dates in 1966.

The Grange told voters in the 1952 state voters' pamphlet that "FARMERS operate their farms and businesses on Standard Time." HistoryLink reports that the measure won even larger margins in rural areas. The plateau's farm economy is the subject of this site's dairy history, but the state's archive gives statewide totals only, so how Enumclaw's precincts voted is not something this page can say.

Before the clocks change in Enumclaw

Phones, computers and radio-controlled clocks should change themselves on the first Sunday in November, since NIST says the operating system supplies the daylight time correction, so the clocks that need setting by hand are the ones with no network or radio signal. NIST's time.gov shows the official U.S. time.

What can still change is the law. Check Congress.gov's page for H.R. 139 for any Senate action, and the Legislature's page for RCW 1.20.055, which is labeled a contingent effective date as of October 20, 2026. UTC runs seven hours ahead of Pacific time until the change and eight hours ahead after it, which matters for forecasts posted in UTC, such as the space-weather ones the northern lights guide explains.